APPENDIX DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COLLECTIONS
BIRTH REGISTRATIONS COMPARED TO THE PERINATAL DATA COLLECTION
Birth registrations data in this publication are not the only births data available in Australia. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) also collects birth data from midwives and other health professionals who attend births. These data are published annually in Australia's Mothers and Babies (AIHW 2015. Australia's mothers and babies 2013 - in brief. Perinatal statistics series no. 31. Cat. no. PER 72. Canberra: AIHW).
As information from these two collections are from different sources, the number of live births may differ. Births from the AIHW National Perinatal Data Collection are released on a year of occurrence basis, while registered births from the ABS Birth Registrations collection are predominantly released on a year of registration basis. The AIHW National Perinatal Data Collection reported the occurrence of 307,277 live births in Australia in 2013 (the latest available data), 0.3% less than the 308,065 births registered in the same year. Since 1998 the size of the difference between the two collections has varied between 0.05% and 3.4%.