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Data

Measles cases in the United States

See all data and research on:
Vaccination

About this data

Measles cases in the United States
Reported number of measles cases. Data for 2026 is incomplete and includes reported cases up to 26 March 2026.
Source
Public Health Reports (1919-1925); US Census Bureau (1945); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1994; 2026) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 1, 2026
Next expected update
April 2026
Date range
1919–2026
Unit
cases

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Public Health Reports; US Census Bureau; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Historical Measles Cases - United States

Data on historical measles cases in the United States, compiled from a selection of government sources.

Sources for each year are as follows:

Retrieved on
February 19, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4575902?seq=25
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4577735?seq=34
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4578131?seq=2
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1945/compendia/statab/66ed.html
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/index93.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Public Health Reports (1896-1970), Vol. 36, No. 8. The Notifiable Diseases: Prevalence during 1919 in States.
Public Health Reports Vol. 37, No. 41. The Notifiable Diseases: Prevalence during 1921 in States. Anthrax, Cerebrospinal Meningitis, Dengue, Diphtheria, Gonorrhea, Influenza, Malaria, Measles, Pneumonia, Poliomyelitis, Rabies, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Scarlet Fever, Septic Sore Throat, Smallpox, Syphilis, Tuberculosis (All Forms and Pulmonary), Typhoid Fever, and Typhus Fever.
Public Health Reports Vol. 40, No. 51. The Notifiable Diseases: Prevalence during 1924 in States.
US Census Bureau. Part 2 - Vital Statistics, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1944-45.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Annual Supplement Summary 1993 Vol. 42, No. 53 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US Public Health Service.

Data on historical measles cases in the United States, compiled from a selection of government sources.

Sources for each year are as follows:

Retrieved on
February 19, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4575902?seq=25
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4577735?seq=34
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4578131?seq=2
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1945/compendia/statab/66ed.html
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/index93.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Public Health Reports (1896-1970), Vol. 36, No. 8. The Notifiable Diseases: Prevalence during 1919 in States.
Public Health Reports Vol. 37, No. 41. The Notifiable Diseases: Prevalence during 1921 in States. Anthrax, Cerebrospinal Meningitis, Dengue, Diphtheria, Gonorrhea, Influenza, Malaria, Measles, Pneumonia, Poliomyelitis, Rabies, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Scarlet Fever, Septic Sore Throat, Smallpox, Syphilis, Tuberculosis (All Forms and Pulmonary), Typhoid Fever, and Typhus Fever.
Public Health Reports Vol. 40, No. 51. The Notifiable Diseases: Prevalence during 1924 in States.
US Census Bureau. Part 2 - Vital Statistics, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1944-45.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Annual Supplement Summary 1993 Vol. 42, No. 53 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US Public Health Service.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – CDC Yearly measles cases (1985-present)

Annual measles cases as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Retrieved on
April 1, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Measles Cases and Outbreaks (2025). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Annual measles cases as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Retrieved on
April 1, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Measles Cases and Outbreaks (2025). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Measles cases in the United States”, part of the following publication: Fiona Spooner, Saloni Dattani, Samantha Vanderslott, and Max Roser (2022) - “Vaccination”. Data adapted from Public Health Reports; US Census Bureau; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260401-063313/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.html [online resource] (archived on April 1, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Public Health Reports (1919-1925); US Census Bureau (1945); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1994; 2026) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Public Health Reports (1919-1925); US Census Bureau (1945); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1994; 2026) – processed by Our World in Data. “Measles cases in the United States” [dataset]. Public Health Reports; US Census Bureau; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Historical Measles Cases - United States”; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “CDC Yearly measles cases (1985-present)” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260401-063313/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.html (archived on April 1, 2026).

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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-measles-cases.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear