An April Fool's Day birthday is relatively rare in these historical U.S. records. April 1 ranks #352 among 366 dates, where #1 means most common. It has fewer recorded births than any other April date.
The selected records contain 217,042 April 1 births from 1994 through 2014. That is 0.253% of all births in the sample, or about 1 in 395 recorded births. The ranking describes these historical records, not the number of living people with an April 1 birthday.
April 1, beside other birthdays
Average recorded births each time a date occurred, 1994 through 2014.
- Commonness rank
- 352 / 366
- Share of recorded births
- 0.253 %
- Recorded births
- 217,042
Bars start at zero. Rank 1 means most common and uses total births across all 366 dates. The bars use births per actual occurrence; February 29 appeared five times, while the other dates appeared 21 times.
Check April 1 and compare with a friend →How does April 1 compare with nearby dates?
April 1 has fewer recorded births than March 31 and April 2. It also falls below April 4, the most common April date in this dataset.
| Date | Recorded births | Commonness rank | Birth share |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 31 | 226,937 | 314 | 0.265% |
| April 1 | 217,042 | 352 | 0.253% |
| April 2 | 232,037 | 216 | 0.271% |
| April 4 | 236,536 | 143 | 0.276% |
| May 1 | 231,969 | 220 | 0.271% |
| June 1 | 235,157 | 163 | 0.274% |
The comparison includes May 1 and June 1. Both have more births than April 1, so being the first day of a month is not enough to explain April 1's low ranking. Those dates fall in different months and on different weekdays; their totals are context, not a controlled test of the holiday.
April 1 occurred 21 times in the selected period, averaging 10,335.3 recorded births per occurrence. The April guide lets you compare every date in the month. For the all-year list, see the rarest-birthday ranking.
Is April 1 still lower when weekdays match?
Usually, in this historical comparison. The separate SSA 2000 through 2014 series lets us compare each April 1 with dates one and two weeks before and after it in the same year. All share its weekday, avoiding a direct comparison between, for example, a Sunday and a Monday.
April 1 had 5.5% fewer births than the combined average of those nearby same-weekday dates. It was lower in 14 of 15 years and higher in 1. Using only one-week neighbors or only two-week neighbors also leaves the pooled April 1 count lower.
| Year | Weekday | Recorded births | Nearby mean | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Saturday | 8,388 | 8,865.5 | -5.4% |
| 2001 | Sunday | 7,212 | 7,568.5 | -4.7% |
| 2002 | Monday | 10,264 | 11,561.5 | -11.2% |
| 2003 | Tuesday | 12,000 | 13,022.3 | -7.9% |
| 2004 | Thursday | 12,138 | 12,791.5 | -5.1% |
| 2005 | Friday | 11,760 | 12,652.8 | -7.1% |
| 2006 | Saturday | 8,268 | 8,424.5 | -1.9% |
| 2007 | Sunday | 7,372 | 7,398.5 | -0.4% |
| 2008 | Tuesday | 12,771 | 13,534.5 | -5.6% |
| 2009 | Wednesday | 12,247 | 12,998.8 | -5.8% |
| 2010 | Thursday | 11,994 | 12,392.8 | -3.2% |
| 2011 | Friday | 11,264 | 11,851 | -5.0% |
| 2012 | Sunday | 6,909 | 6,832.3 | +1.1% |
| 2013 | Monday | 10,440 | 11,546.3 | -9.6% |
| 2014 | Tuesday | 11,710 | 12,258.5 | -4.5% |
April 1's lower count persists across most years, even as the date moves through the weekdays. This annual comparison stays within the SSA source series.
Does April Fool's Day cause fewer births?
The data cannot establish that. Matching nearby weekdays makes the comparison more useful, but it does not reveal parental preferences, delivery methods, hospital schedules or other reasons a birth happened on one date rather than another.
April 1 has a low total in the combined ranking and falls below its nearby same-weekday comparison in most SSA years. The claim that parents avoid the holiday would require evidence beyond these daily counts.
Weekday and weekend births shows another calendar pattern to consider when comparing daily totals. Neither that pattern nor this date's rank predicts an individual baby's birthday.
Sources and calculations
We use daily U.S. birth files compiled by FiveThirtyEight: CDC/NCHS for 1994 through 1999 and SSA for 2000 through 2014. We exclude the overlapping CDC years. These sources have different administrative coverage, so the yearly nearby-weekday analysis uses SSA alone.
Rank sorts date totals; share divides April 1's births by all recorded births in the selected sample. These results do not describe worldwide births or current birth rates. See the methodology for the source and calculation details, or compare April 1 with your birthday in the checker.
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