Birth certificates are a fairly recent invention, common only since the 1900's. Prior to that, births might be recorded in the local church, usually when a child as baptized.
Depending on their location of birth, some people in the 19th century had a birth certificate (issued by a church or some other organization) while many people did not.
QUESTION - When did birth certificates become required in the U.S.? Is their a federal law or mandate related to birth certificates? I am guessing that certificates of birth became standard during the depression since that's when social security was introduced, but I want to know for certain.
ANSWER - No, there is no federal law requiring everyone to have a birth certificate. Vital records laws are state-level concerns. The U.S. Department of Health has put out recommended standards for vital records, but they are only recommendations.
The pattern in most states was that birth certificates were kept by the town or county, and not until the early 20th century was there a coordinated statewide system of birth certificate registration. The last states to implement a statewide system of birth certificate registrations: Mississippi in 1912; North Carolina in 1913; Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana in 1914; South Carolina in 1915; Illinois in 1916; West Virginia in 1917; Georgia in 1919; Maine in 1923; Florida in 1963. However, the existance of system of birth registration does not imply that registration was required.
Even today, no state requires that all births must be registered.
Registration is voluntary. However, without a birth certificate, a child cannot get a Social Security number, and without a Social Security number the children cannot be declared a dependent on federal tax forms.
The first group of retirees eligible for age-related retirement benefits came in 1940, three years after the first Social Security taxes were collected. Many of these retirees, born in the 1870s, were unable to submit a birth certificate to verify their age, because they never had one. So a flurry of delayed birth certificates were created using secondary sources.
