Birthdays/February
February 29
52,311 people born in the US between 1994 and 2014 have this birthday — one in 1,632 of them.
- Rank of 366
- #366the rarest of all
- Births a year
- 2,4911994–2014
- Against an average day
- −77.7%the average day of its own year
- Born 1994–2014
- 52,311one in 1,632
- In a leap year
- 10,462−6.2%
Only the leap years: the date does not exist in the other sixteen.
Your share card
February 29
United States · rank 366/366 · 2,491 births per year (average) · −77.7% versus the average date
CDC/NCHS + SSA · FiveThirtyEight (CC BY 4.0) · 1994–2014
The date in numbers
Over the 21 years from 1994 to 2014, February 29 averages 2,491 births a year, which places it 366th of the 366 dates of the year.
It is last of the 366, and the reason is the calendar rather than the count: 29 February existed in only 5 of these 21 years. When it does come round it is an ordinary day and a little quiet — 10,462 births in a leap year, −6.2% against the average day of that same year.
Where a date falls in the week moves the count more than the date itself does: across 1994–2014 the five weekdays average +10.9% against an average day and Saturday and Sunday −27.1%. This date fell on a weekday in 4 of its 5 years and on a weekend in 1, averaging +1.3% and −36.2%. These are counts of births that were registered; the page does not say why they fall this way.
February 29 by the weekday it fell on
In 21 years a date works its way round the week. Each row is the average of the years this one landed on that weekday — a handful of years each, so read the shape, not the decimal.
| Weekday | Births on such a day | Against an average day | Days counted | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | 11,645 | +5.0% | 1 year | |
| Wednesday | 11,042 | +1.0% | 1 year | |
| Thursday | 10,692 | +0.6% | 1 year | |
| Friday | 11,631 | −1.2% | 1 year | |
| Sunday | 7,301 | −36.2% | 1 year |
The days either side
- 323February 2610,727 · −3.6%
- 291February 2710,858 · −2.5%
- 198February 2811,053 · −0.7%
- 366February 292,491 · −77.7%
- 172March 111,129 · −0.0%
- 311March 210,802 · −3.1%
- 192March 311,074 · −0.6%
Names given to the people born on February 29
Everyone counted on this page was born between 1994 and 2014. The most given names of 1994 were Jessica and Michael; of 2014, Emma and Noah. Every year in between has its own list.
Years in this data
Where the numbers come from. Births by exact date, 1994–2014: 1994–2003 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics (National Vital Statistics System); 2004–2014 from the Social Security Administration. Both files are works of the US government and in the public domain. They are taken from FiveThirtyEight's data repository, which republishes them under CC BY 4.0 — credit to FiveThirtyEight, github.com/fivethirtyeight/data.
The two files overlap in 2000–2003, where the SSA count runs about 2% above the CDC/NCHS one; those four years are taken from the vital-statistics file, so each year has one source. Every date is scored against the average day of its own year before the years are averaged, so the join cannot move a ranking.