Births by Mother's Country of Birth in London

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes data on the number of live births by the mother's country of birth in England and Wales each year. Every time a birth is registered in England and Wales both parents are required to state their places of birth on their child's birth certificate, and this information is then collated to produce these statistics.

In order to make it easier to look at what these data tell us about births in London, and how these have been changing over time, the GLA Demography team has extracted the data which relate to London from the main ONS dataset since 2001 and presented it here in an easily accessible format.

For more information about how the ONS produces these statistics, please visit their website: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths

For more information about how we extracted these data and created this report, please this project's Github repository: https://github.com/Greater-London-Authority/births_by_mothers_country_of_birth

Since 2001, the number of live births being recorded in London has changed from 104,162 to 106,692 births per year. The proportion of births which were to mothers who had been born outside the UK has changed from 43% in 2001 to 58% in the most recent year (2022).

In 2022, the region of origin which supplied the largest number of births to non-UK-born mothers in London was Asia with 22,413, followed by the Africa which provided 10,799. The region of origin which has seen the largest change since 2001 is the Asia, which went from 13,489 live births per year in 2001 to 22,413 in 2022.

In 2022, the region with the largest number of births to non-UK-born mothers was London with 61,846 live births (58% of all live births in London). By contrast, the region with the lowest number of births to non-UK-born mothers was the Wales with 3,696 live births to non-UK-born mothers, which only represented 13% of all live births in that region.

The data shows that London accounted for 34% of all the births to non-UK-born mothers in England and Wales in 2022, which was a far higher proportion than any other region.

These data also highlight a couple of other interesting comparisons. Firstly, despite being the second largest region in England and Wales in terms of population, London is not the region with the largest number of births to UK-born mothers. Secondly, London is the only region to have relatively large numbers of mothers from every region of the world according to the way in which the ONS has categorised them, including Africa, non-EU European countries (such as Turkey and Russia) and the 'Rest of the World' (which includes the Americas and Oceania).

The data comparing London with England & Wales excluding London and England & Wales as a whole (including London) is provided in the table below:

		Total Births - UK Mothers		Total Births - Overseas Mothers		Pre-2004 EU countries		Post-2004 EU accession countries		Rest of Europe		Asia		Africa		Rest of the world
Year	Region	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
2022	London	44,846	42%	61,846	58%	6,847	6%	9,811	9%	5,826	5%	22,413	21%	10,799	10%	6,150	6%
2022	Rest of England & Wales	377,182	76%	121,408	24%	11,285	2%	30,077	6%	6,223	1%	44,916	9%	21,507	4%	7,400	1%
2022	England & Wales	422,028	70%	183,254	30%	18,132	3%	39,888	7%	12,049	2%	67,329	11%	32,306	5%	13,550	2%

Births by Mother's Country of Birth by London Borough