About this data

Source: OECD Health Statistics (2026), Surgical procedures

• The number of caesarean sections in hospitals in a year, as a share of live births. This is close to, but not exactly, the share of births by caesarean, since one caesarean can deliver twins, or a stillborn baby.
• Countries collect these figures from hospital records in different ways, and some years are estimated. The OECD's UK figures can differ from those published by each UK nation.
• Japan doesn't report caesarean sections to the OECD. For the United States, which only reports caesareans for hospital inpatients, those are shown; day-case caesareans are very rare.

This chart appears in Child and maternal health.