Australia's mothers and babies

Place of birth refers to the setting that a baby was born in. The National Perinatal Data Collection defines a home birth as one that is planned to take place at a home and is attended by a midwife or other medical professional.

In 2023, almost all births in Australia took place in hospitals (97%). Of mothers who gave birth in hospital, 3 in 4 (75%) did so in a public hospital. A small proportion of mothers gave birth elsewhere, including birth centres (1.5%), at home (0.7%), or in other settings (such as before arrival at a hospital) (0.7%).

In recent years, there has been a slight year-on-year increase in the number of home births (from 923 (0.3%) in 2019 to 2,081 (0.7%) in 2023). Due to the small numbers of home births, and variation between jurisdictions, these data should be interpreted with caution.

While most births occur in hospital, there are many different models of maternity care that women may use in this setting. For more information see Maternity model of care.

Figure 1 presents trend data on the place of birth of women who gave birth, by selected maternal characteristics, between 2010 (or earliest available year of data) and 2023. Select the ‘Current data’ button to view 2023 data.

Although the proportion of homes births in Australia (0.7%) is small they were slightly more likely among women who:

• had a parity of 2 (1.1%)
• lived in Inner regional (1.0%) or Outer Regional areas (0.8%) and
• who were born in the United Kingdom (1.1%).

While 1.5% of women gave birth in birth centres overall, birth centre births were slightly more common among women who:

• had a parity of 1 (1.9%)
• lived in the highest socioeconomic areas (1.8%) and
• were born in the United Kingdom (3.8%), South Africa (2.2%) and New Zealand (2.0%).