Spina bifida affects about 1 in every 2,875 births in the United States, making it one of the more common birth defects of the central nervous system. Roughly 1,278 babies are born with the condition each year in the U.S., and an estimated 124,150 Americans are currently living with it. While not extremely rare, it’s uncommon enough that most people will never encounter it personally.
U.S. Rates by the Numbers
The CDC tracks spina bifida rates across racial and ethnic groups, and the numbers show some variation. Hispanic families have the highest rate at 3.80 per 10,000 live births. Non-Hispanic white families follow at 3.09 per 10,000, and non-Hispanic Black families have the lowest rate at 2.73 per 10,000. These differences likely reflect a mix of genetic susceptibility, dietary patterns, and access to prenatal vitamins containing folic acid.
To put those numbers in perspective, if you gathered 10,000 newborns in a hospital, you’d expect to see roughly three with spina bifida. It’s significantly less common than conditions like congenital heart defects (which affect about 1 in 100 births) but more common than many genetic disorders people have heard of.
Global Rates Are Much Higher
Worldwide, neural tube defects (the broader category that includes spina bifida) occur in about 2 out of every 1,000 births. That translates to somewhere between 214,000 and 322,000 affected pregnancies each year globally. The burden falls disproportionately on developing countries, where folic acid supplementation programs are less established and prenatal care may be harder to access.
The gap between U.S. rates and global rates is stark. In countries without grain fortification or widespread prenatal vitamin use, spina bifida can be five to ten times more common than in the United States or Canada.
Folic Acid Cut Rates Nearly in Half
Spina bifida used to be significantly more common. In 1998, the U.S. and Canada began requiring folic acid to be added to enriched grain products like bread, pasta, and cereal. The impact was dramatic. A landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that neural tube defects dropped 46% after fortification, and spina bifida specifically fell by 53%.
Before fortification, rates in Canada were about 1.58 per 1,000 births. Afterward, they dropped to 0.86 per 1,000. This single public health measure prevented thousands of cases. The reason it works: folic acid is essential for proper closure of the neural tube, which forms the brain and spinal cord during the first few weeks of pregnancy, often before a woman knows she’s pregnant. Fortifying the food supply ensures most women of childbearing age get a baseline amount regardless of whether they take supplements.
Types of Spina Bifida Vary Widely
Not all spina bifida is the same, and the different forms range from serious to virtually unnoticeable. The mildest form, spina bifida occulta, involves a small gap in the spine’s bones but no damage to the spinal cord or nerves. It’s surprisingly common, affecting an estimated 10 to 20 percent of the general population. Many people live their entire lives without knowing they have it, often discovering it incidentally on an X-ray taken for an unrelated reason.
The more serious forms involve the spinal cord or its protective membranes pushing through the opening in the spine. Meningocele, where only the membranes protrude, is the rarer of the two and generally causes fewer problems. Myelomeningocele is the most severe form, where both the membranes and spinal cord tissue are exposed. This is the type most people mean when they talk about spina bifida, and it accounts for the majority of the roughly 1,278 annual U.S. cases tracked by the CDC. It typically requires surgery shortly after birth and can cause varying degrees of paralysis, bladder and bowel issues, and other complications.
Prenatal Screening Changes the Picture
Modern ultrasound technology detects most cases of spina bifida before birth, which significantly affects the numbers we see in live birth statistics. How much it affects those numbers depends heavily on where you live.
A national study from Denmark illustrates this clearly. Between 2008 and 2015, the overall incidence of spina bifida in Danish pregnancies was 4.9 per 10,000, but 89% of cases were detected by ultrasound before 22 weeks of gestation. Among women who received a prenatal diagnosis, 90% chose to end the pregnancy. As a result, far fewer babies were born with the condition than the underlying rate would suggest. Neighboring Sweden, where fewer parents opted for prenatal screening and attitudes toward termination differed, had a higher rate of newborns with spina bifida (1.3 per 10,000) despite a potentially similar underlying incidence.
Termination rates after prenatal diagnosis vary enormously by country: around 97% in parts of France, 92% in one Italian region, 78% in the northern Netherlands, and about 34% in Atlanta. This means that live birth statistics in different countries reflect not just how often spina bifida occurs, but how each healthcare system screens for it and how families respond to a diagnosis.
Who Lives With Spina Bifida Today
Advances in surgical care and ongoing medical management mean that most people born with spina bifida now survive well into adulthood. A 2020 population estimate found approximately 124,150 people living with spina bifida in the United States, ranging from newborns to adults in their 80s. Women slightly outnumber men (67,662 to 56,488), which aligns with a pattern seen in many neural tube defect studies.
This growing population of adults with spina bifida is relatively new. Decades ago, survival rates were much lower, and many children did not live past their first years. Today, with better neurosurgical techniques and coordinated care for related conditions like hydrocephalus (excess fluid around the brain), the focus has shifted from survival to quality of life, independence, and managing the condition across a full lifespan.
Factors That Raise or Lower Risk
Beyond ethnicity, several factors influence how likely spina bifida is to occur. Obesity in the mother is a well-established risk factor. Certain genetic variations that affect how the body processes folic acid also play a role, which partly explains why some populations have higher rates even when folic acid intake seems adequate. Having a previous pregnancy affected by a neural tube defect raises the risk substantially, from roughly 1 in 2,875 to about 1 in 33 for subsequent pregnancies.
Diabetes, certain anti-seizure medications, and high body temperatures early in pregnancy (from fever or hot tub use) have also been linked to increased risk. On the protective side, taking 400 micrograms of folic acid daily before conception and through early pregnancy reduces the risk by up to 70%, making it one of the most effective preventive measures for any birth defect.