Blood Type Distribution by Race and Ethnicity: Global ABO Data

Why Blood Type Frequencies Vary Across Populations

Your blood type isn’t random — it reflects thousands of years of human migration, genetic drift, and evolutionary pressure. Different populations settled different regions, interbred within those groups, and were shaped by local disease environments. The result is that the frequency of A, B, AB, and O blood types varies considerably across the world’s ethnic groups.

These differences aren’t just academically interesting. They have direct practical implications for blood banking, transfusion medicine, and organ transplantation. A hospital that serves a predominantly Southeast Asian community will see different type-distribution demands than one serving a Central African population — and its donor recruitment needs differ accordingly.

How ABO Allele Frequencies Are Determined

Blood type frequencies in a population are ultimately driven by the frequency of three alleles — A, B, and O — in the regional gene pool. Migration moves those alleles around. When populations were isolated for long periods, genetic drift could amplify or reduce particular alleles. When disease exerted selection pressure (as malaria did with the Duffy antigen), alleles linked to disease resistance spread.

Compiling accurate cross-population data has historically been challenging. As BloodBook.com’s original source material noted, “lack of availability and interchange of this important data” limits the reliability of global comparisons. The data below represents the best available information from population surveys conducted over decades.

Regional ABO Distribution Patterns

European Populations

European populations are characterized by relatively high type A frequency and low type B. This pattern holds across most of Western, Northern, and Central Europe. Type B frequency typically falls in the 10-15% range, while type A often reaches 40-45% in many regions.

Population	Type O	Type A	Type B	Type AB
UK (England)	47%	42%	8%	3%
Germany	41%	43%	11%	5%
France	43%	45%	9%	3%
Sweden	38%	47%	10%	5%
Russia	33%	36%	23%	8%

Russia stands out with notably higher type B frequency — reflecting the influence of Asian migration and gene flow from Central Asian populations over centuries.

Asian Populations

East and South Asian populations show markedly different patterns from Europeans, typically with higher type B frequencies. South Asian populations (particularly the Indian subcontinent) show some of the world’s highest B frequencies.

Population	Type O	Type A	Type B	Type AB
China (Han)	34%	28%	29%	9%
Japan	30%	38%	22%	10%
India	37%	22%	33%	8%
Korea	28%	32%	30%	10%
Vietnam	45%	21%	27%	7%

Japan is notable for relatively balanced distribution across all four types. India shows some of the highest type B percentages of any large population, while Vietnam shows higher type O frequency than most East Asian neighbors.

African Populations

African populations show strong type O predominance in many regions, combined with notable variation in rarer antigens that define rare blood types.

Population	Type O	Type A	Type B	Type AB
Nigeria	53%	20%	22%	5%
Kenya	60%	19%	20%	1%
Ghana	47%	22%	25%	6%
Ethiopia	49%	27%	20%	4%
South Africa (mixed)	45%	27%	24%	4%

Type B frequencies in West and East African populations often reach 20-25%, higher than most European populations. But the clinically critical variation in African populations often lies beyond ABO — in antigens like Duffy (Fy), U, and Ss, which vary dramatically between African-descent and other populations.

Indigenous Americas

Indigenous populations of the Americas show one of the most striking patterns in global blood type data: extremely high type O frequency, often reaching 90-100% in isolated groups.

Population	Type O	Type A	Type B	Type AB
Peruvian Quechua	100%	0%	0%	0%
Navajo (US)	73%	27%	0%	0%
Maya (Central America)	98%	1%	1%	0%
Canadian First Nations	83%	17%	0%	0%

Many South and Central American indigenous groups show near-universal type O. Some researchers attribute this to founder effect — the original founding populations that crossed the land bridge from Asia tens of thousands of years ago may have carried limited allele diversity. Others point to disease-driven selection pressures after European contact that disproportionately reduced non-O populations.

Middle Eastern and North African Populations

Population	Type O	Type A	Type B	Type AB
Egypt	33%	36%	24%	7%
Saudi Arabia	48%	24%	22%	6%
Turkey	43%	34%	16%	7%
Iran	38%	33%	23%	6%
Israel (Jewish)	40%	34%	17%	9%

Middle Eastern populations generally show intermediate frequencies between European and South Asian patterns, reflecting the geographic and historical position of this region as a migration corridor between Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Pacific Islander and Oceanian Populations

Population	Type O	Type A	Type B	Type AB
Aboriginal Australians	61%	39%	0%	0%
Fiji	44%	24%	27%	5%
Hawaii (Native)	61%	30%	5%	4%
Papua New Guinea	42%	27%	23%	8%

Aboriginal Australians show one of the world’s most unusual patterns — essentially no type B blood. Like indigenous American populations, this likely reflects founder effects from small ancestral populations that carried limited B allele frequency.

Medical Implications: Why This Data Matters

Transfusion Supply Planning

Blood type distribution directly affects what a hospital needs to stock. A medical center serving a predominantly South Asian community will see higher demand for type B blood than one serving a Northern European population. Blood banks must recruit donor pools that reflect the populations they serve — not just in ABO terms, but in extended antigen profiles.

The Ethnicity-Matching Problem

For patients with rare blood types, the link between ethnicity and blood type is not just demographic trivia — it’s clinical necessity. When a West African patient needs U-negative blood, the search for a compatible donor almost exclusively runs through donors of West African ancestry. The blood simply doesn’t exist in sufficient quantities elsewhere.

This creates a systemic challenge: if blood donation rates are lower in certain ethnic communities, patients from those communities face worse odds of finding rare-compatible blood. Blood centers in diverse cities actively recruit from underrepresented communities specifically to address this gap.

Duffy Antigen and Malaria: A Genetic-Geographic Connection

The distribution of Duffy-negative blood (Fy(a-b-)) across populations maps almost precisely onto the historical distribution of Plasmodium vivax malaria. West African populations, where P. vivax malaria was endemic for millennia, have high Duffy-negative rates because people without Duffy antigens cannot be infected by P. vivax. Natural selection spread the protective allele through the population.

This same protective adaptation now creates transfusion challenges in modern healthcare settings far from West Africa, where Duffy-negative donors are rare among the general blood supply.

Data Limitations

Blood type distribution data has real limitations. Historical surveys were often conducted on convenience samples — blood donors, hospital patients, or military recruits — rather than true population samples. Populations have mixed significantly over centuries of migration, and many national data points reflect multi-ethnic populations. The data above should be understood as indicative of trends, not precise biological divides.

For an overview of how blood typing systems create the biological basis for all this variation, see our article on blood typing systems. For specifics on how rare blood types emerge from antigen variation and how rare donor registries work, see rare blood types.