Vital statistics (government records)
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This article is about vital statistics in relation to government records. For other uses, see vital statistics (disambiguation).
Vital statistics (sometimes referred to as vital rates) are the information maintained by a government, recording the birth and death of individuals within that government's jurisdiction. These data are used by public health programs to evaluate how effective their programs are. They are the cornerstone of public health systems today.
A useful by-product of birth and death registration are official certificates of those events. These certificates serve as prima facie evidence of that event.
The agency responsible for overseeing this system in the United States is the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
