NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

NCHS's Vital Statistics 1995-1998 Matched Multiple Birth Data

This page contains the NBER collection of Matched Multiple Birth Data of the National Vital Statistics System of the National Center for Health Statistics.

This dataset allows for analysis of characteristics (such as gender combination of the set, outcome of the set, birthweight differences among set mates) of sets of births and fetal deaths in multiple deliveries through a set member identifier.

Demographic data include variables such as parents age and race; educational attainment, marital status, place of birth, and Hispanic origin of the mother; and birth-order, sex, and identification of infant sets. Health data include items such as birth weight, gestation, prenatal care, attendant at birth, and Apgar score. Check the documentation below for more detail.

Other birth data availble are Birth Cohort Linked Birth/Infant Death Data, 1983-1991 & 1995-1998, Natality Data, 1968-1985 & 1991-1995, 1998-2001, and Period Linked Birth/Infant Death Data, 1995-2000, as part of the Perinatal Mortality Data. *** NCHS did not produce Linked Birth/Infant Death from 1992-1994.

SEER provides helpful U.S. Population data for 1969 on.

By using this data you signify your agreement with NCHS's data use rules. Works referring to the datasets or codebooks should contain a citation to NCHS. Published material derived from this data should include a citation such as this at the bottom of the table: "Source: National Center for Health Statistics (span of years used)"

Both ".Z" and ".zip" files can be uncompressed with winzip. In addition, ".Z" files can be uncompressed using the UNIX uncompress command and ".zip" files can be unzipped with pkunzip. To check your ability to uncompress these files, download the small files compress.Z or compress.zip. These files give an example of how to read in .Z and .zip ASCII files into SAS for UNIX without decompressing the files.

The SAS, SPSS, and Stata files were created by Jean Roth to make access to Matched Multiple Birth data easier.

To download files in Internet Explorer, right click on them and select "Save Target As...".

Updates and changes.



Data
SAS, SPSS, Stata files
UNIX Pkzipped SAS
Stata
 SPSS
.dct
.do
1995-1998 mmb.dat.Z mmb.zip mmb.sas mmb.dct mmb.do mmb.sps
File size: The compressed 1995-1998 data file is about 10 Mb. The compression ratio for these files is over 90%. NBER internal users can access the data from a UNIX shell at /homes/data/mults or on an NBER PC via Network Neighborhood --> NBER --> home --> data --> mults

DOCUMENTATION

1995-1998
All Documenation Files Below, Pkzipped 1995-1998
Development of the Matched Multiple Birth File methdoc
List of Data Elements and Locations datael
Matched Multiple Birth File record documentation link
Number of matched, unmatched, and incomplete records of twins and triplets by perinatal outcome: U.S., 1995-1998 tab1
Number of matched sets of twins by gender of set by perinatal outcome and by maternal age: U.S., 1995-1998 tab2a
Number of matched sets of triplets by gender of set by perinatal outcome and by maternal age: U.S., 1995-1998 tab2b
Number of matched sets of quadruplets by gender of set by perinatal outcome and by maternal age: U.S., 1995-1998 tab2c
Technical Appendix -- Natality tan
Technical Appendix -- Fetal Death tafd
Introduction to the 1998 Linked Birth/Infant Death file lbid
Percent of birth records on which specified items are not stated: each state, 1995 tab95
Percent of birth records on which specified items are not stated: each state, 1996 tab96
Percent of birth records on which specified items are not stated: each state, 1997 tab97
Percent of fetal death records on which specified items are not stated: United States, 1998 fet98
Standard Death Certificate
sdc
Standard Birth Certificates
sbc68-77   sbc78-88   sbc89-02   sbc03

To report errors, or if you have comments or suggestions, e-mail jroth@nber.org.

Last Update: October 13, 2005 Created by Jean Roth October 21, 2002

  
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