birthday traffic

How common is a January 1 birthday?

Published by Birthday Traffic · · Sources and method

January 1

Top 10 least common

Super rare

Rarer than 99.5%of other birthday dates.

1 in 521births in this sample share your birthday.

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  • 7,827births in an average year21 years observed
  • 70%of a typical day11,175 births on an average day
  • #12 of 12January as a month10,721 births per day
  • −9.4%share of births, then to nowfirst five vs last five observed years

January 1 is the 364th most common birthday of the 366 dates in this collection, and the 3rd rarest. It records 164,362 births out of 85,712,738, so roughly 1 in 521 people in this sample were born on it.

It is more common than 0.5% of the other 365 dates and rarer than 99.5%, which puts it in the top 1% rarest birthdays. It records 70.0% of an average day’s count in the sample.

January 1 among all 366 dates

All 366 dates sorted from most to least common by recorded U.S. births 1994–2014, coloured by rarity tier, with January 1 marked.

January 1 among all 366 datesAll 366 dates sorted from most to least common by recorded U.S. births 1994–2014, coloured by rarity tier, with January 1 marked.0100,000200,000300,000Very common: 91 dates, ranks #1–#91Very commonCommon: 92 dates, ranks #92–#183CommonUncommon: 147 dates, ranks #184–#330UncommonRare: 18 dates, ranks #331–#348Very rare: 15 dates, ranks #349–#363Super rare: 3 dates, ranks #364–#366#364 January 1: 164,362January 1 · #364 of 366most commonleast common
Very common 91Common 92Uncommon 147Rare 18Very rare 15Super rare 3All 366 dates from most to least common, coloured by the six rarity tiers; January 1 is marked. Recorded U.S. births, 1994–2014.

January 1 against the days around it

Recorded U.S. births, January window, 1994–2014
DateTotal birthsRank of 366
December 29252,082#16
December 30250,577#23
December 31219,101#348
January 1 (this date)164,362#364
January 2196,481#361
January 3228,259#301
January 4232,354#207

January as a whole records 10,721 births per day, ranked #12 of 12 months. Month ranking · December 31 · January 2

Has January 1 changed over time?

Annual U.S. birth totals changed across this window, so a raw daily count moves with the size of the year. The chart uses each year's share of that year's births instead, in births per 100,000. Averaged over the first five observed years it is 205.3 per 100,000; over the last five, 186.1 per 100,000 (-9.4%).

January 1 as a share of each year’s U.S. births, 1994–2014

Births on January 1 per 100,000 births in that year, one point per year, with the change of source at 2000 marked and the first-five and last-five year means drawn as bands.

January 1 as a share of each year’s U.S. births, 1994–2014Births on January 1 per 100,000 births in that year, one point per year, with the change of source at 2000 marked and the first-five and last-five year means drawn as bands.140160180200220240SSA file from 2000first five: 205.3last five: 186.119941996199820002002200420062008201020122014per 100,000, 1994: 204.8 per 100,000per 100,000, 1995: 200.7 per 100,000per 100,000, 1996: 197.4 per 100,000per 100,000, 1997: 215.1 per 100,000per 100,000, 1998: 208.4 per 100,000per 100,000, 1999: 206.2 per 100,000per 100,000, 2000: 218.9 per 100,000per 100,000, 2001: 186.4 per 100,000per 100,000, 2002: 193.4 per 100,000per 100,000, 2003: 190.0 per 100,000per 100,000, 2004: 196.0 per 100,000per 100,000, 2005: 173.7 per 100,000per 100,000, 2006: 164.6 per 100,000per 100,000, 2007: 167.1 per 100,000per 100,000, 2008: 185.9 per 100,000per 100,000, 2009: 194.3 per 100,000per 100,000, 2010: 194.1 per 100,000per 100,000, 2011: 181.0 per 100,000per 100,000, 2012: 165.7 per 100,000per 100,000, 2013: 189.7 per 100,000per 100,000, 2014: 199.9 per 100,000per 100,000
The dotted line marks the change from the CDC/NCHS file to the SSA file.
January 1 as a share of that year's U.S. births
YearBirths on this datePer 100,000 births
19948,096204.8
19957,828200.7
19967,683197.4
19978,349215.1
19988,213208.4
19998,163206.2
20009,083218.9
20017,663186.4
20027,927193.4
20037,908190.0
20048,205196.0
20057,317173.7
20067,137164.6
20077,322167.1
20088,014185.9
20098,145194.3
20107,871194.1
20117,254181.0
20126,629165.7
20137,537189.7
20148,018199.9

Source break: 1994–1999 counts come from the CDC/NCHS daily file and 2000–2014 from the Social Security Administration daily file. The overlapping years 2000–2003 are taken from the SSA file only, so each year is counted once. But the step at 2000 is a change of source as well as a change of year, and any comparison across it includes that change.

The weekday the date fell on, scheduling practice and recording practice are all inside these lines.

A generation earlier, in the separate daily file for 1969–1988, January 1 ranked #364 of 366 with 8,018 births per occurrence. The 1969–1988 calendar and what changed since.

January 1 in five countries

Countries are compared only over the matched years 2007–2014, which all five sources cover completely, and using births per occurrence so that leap day is handled the same way everywhere. Each country's records are counted on their own.

January 1 rank and intensity, 2007–2014
CountryRank of 366Index (100 = average day)
United States#36567.4
England & Wales#36486.8
Denmark#36473.1
Metropolitan France#36580.4
Malaysia#30496.0

In the matched window the U.S. rank is #365; over the full 1994–2014 collection it is #364. The two numbers answer different questions and usually differ for two reasons at once: the window is eight years against twenty-one, and the metric is births per occurrence against the total across the whole period. Every figure on this page names its window and its metric. Full five-country study.

Among the 6,025,603 people living in Denmark on January 1, 2026, 24,673 have this birthday, one resident in 244; this date also receives administrative birthdays for people born abroad, so the count is inflated. A count of people living there, wherever they were born. How many people in Denmark share a birthday.

Born on January 1

12 people from the English Wikipedia “On this day” birth lists, oldest first. A reading list. Every birth figure on this page comes from the national records.

Names and descriptions from English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-09-11; curated arts/science/sport entries, years 1800–2008. not a celebrity census. conflicting identities excluded.

How this date was explored here

Site usage. Between September 11, 2026 at 07:05 UTC and September 15, 2026 at 10:38 Pacific time, 1,029 tab sessions looked up January 1 on this site. 127 of them started there and 902 arrived after checking a different date first.

Checked next to: February 29 (160 sessions), December 31 (150 sessions), January 2 (84 sessions). Consecutive requests inside one tab session.

Counts are tab sessions. Checked dates are the dates people looked up. The rarity figures above come from birth records. How these counts were made · Open the January 1 card

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Sources, method and limits

Main ranking: 85,712,738 recorded U.S. births on 7,670 calendar dates, 1994–2014. CDC/NCHS daily counts for 1994–1999 and Social Security Administration daily counts for 2000–2014, as compiled by FiveThirtyEight and attributed under CC BY 4.0. The overlapping years 2000–2003 are counted once.

Ranks compare totals across the 366 observed month-and-day dates. February 29 occurred 5 times in this window; every other date occurred 21 times, so per-occurrence figures are used wherever seasonality is compared.

Every figure above comes from the administrative records named here, at the granularity those records publish: a day, a month or a year. Coverage and definitions differ between countries and eras, so two sources are combined only where their documentation states the windows are separate, and the page where that happens says so.

Full method, leap-day treatment and definitions.

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