Term: Country of Birth

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Glossary Definition

Last Updated: 2025-07-21

Definition:

The country in which an immigrant was born. It should be distinguished from "country of last permanent residence" and "country of citizenship".

Country of birth is a variable that can be found in both the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Registry Database Permanent Resident data files, but the variable name is different in each file, as follows:

IRCC File Name	Variable Name in 2023 & later versions	Variable Name in 2019 version
LEGACY LANDING	COUNTRY_OF_BIRTH_CD	COUNTRY_OF_BIRTH_CD
LANDING	COB_ID	COUNTRY_OF_BIRTH

Note: in the 2023 and later versions of the data, these variables are also available in the Temporary Resident data files for both time periods. The legacy time period also provides the country name as a string, but using the code enables conversion using the SCCAI_country_name, SCCAI_macro_region, and SCCAI_sub_region formats.

CAUTIONS:

• Country of birth is used synonymously to "country of origin" in the literature. However, there is no variable in the IRCC databases named "country of origin". Users need to specify whether they will use country of birth, country of citizenship, or country of last permanent residence (all three variables are available in the IRCC data, though the last one's availability is more limited). Country of origin is an ambiguous term with no correspondence in the data and therefore it should be avoided.
  
• Country of birth denotes the country where an individual was born and labelling of race, culture or ethnicity should not be used or inferred without a strong rationale.
  
• As with most numeric codes used in the LEGACY LANDING and LANDING files, the codes used in each file have different values and have their own unique formats to convert codes to country names.
• While the LEGACY LANDING variable name is the same in the 2019 and 2023 versions, the type changed from numeric to character in 2023.

Related concepts 

• Birth Region
• Immigration / Migration Overview - Links to Immigration / Migration Data and Related Concepts and Glossary Terms

Related terms 

• Country of Citizenship
• Country of Last Permanent Residence
• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Registry Data
• Migrant / Migration
• Primary Migration

References 

• Urquia ML, Moineddin R, Jha P, O'Campo PJ, McKenzie K, Glazier RH, Henry DA, Ray JG. Sex ratios at birth after induced abortion. CMAJ 2016;188(9):E18-190. [Abstract] (View)

Term used in 

• Ewesesan R, Chartier MJ, Nickel NC, Wall-Wieler E, Urquia ML. Psychosocial and behavioral health indicators among immigrant and non-immigrant recent mothers. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth 2022;22(1):612. [Abstract] (View)
• Urquia M, Walld R, Prior H, Detillieux G, Eze N, Koseva I. The Diversity of Immigrants to Manitoba, Migration Dynamics and Basic Healthcare Service Use. Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, 2020. [Report] [Summary] [Additional Materials] (View)
• Urquia ML, Walld R, Wanigaratne S, Eze ND, Azimaee M, McDonald JT, Guttmann A. Linking national immigration data to provincial repositories: The case of Canada. Int J Popul Data Sci 2021;6(1):1412. [Abstract] (View)