This rise can at least partly be attributed to the increasing popularity of fertility drugs and procedures such as IVF, which result in multiple births more frequently than unassisted fertilizations do. It may also be linked to the increase of growth hormones in food. Ethnicity
About 1 in 90 human births (1.1%) results from a twin pregnancy. The rate of dizygotic twinning varies greatly among ethnic groups, ranging as high as about 45 per 1000 births (4.5%) for the Yoruba to 10% for Linha São Pedro, a tiny Brazilian settlement which belongs to the city of Cândido Godói. In Cândido Godói, one in five pregnancies has resulted in twins. The Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa has put forward the theory that experiments of the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele could be responsible for the high ratio of twins in the area. His theory was rejected by Brazilian scientists who had studied twins living in Linha São Pedro; they suggested genetic factors within that community as a more likely explanation. A high twinning rate has also been observed in other places of the world, including:

Igbo-Ora in Nigeria
Kodinhi, located in Kerala, India
Mohammadpur Umri, located in Uttar Pradesh, IndiaThe widespread use of fertility drugs causing hyperovulation (stimulated release of multiple eggs by the mother) has caused what some call an "epidemic of multiple births". In 2001, for the first time ever in the US, the twinning rate exceeded 3% of all births. Nevertheless, the rate of monozygotic twins remains at about 1 in 333 across the globe.
In these cases, although the twins did form from the same fertilized egg, it is incorrect to refer to them as genetically identical, since they have different karyotypes. Semi-identical (sesquizygotic) twins
Monozygotic twins can develop differently, due to their genes being differently activated. More unusual are "semi-identical twins", also known as "sesquizygotic". As of 2019, only two cases have been reported. These "half-identical twins" are hypothesized to occur when an unfertilized egg cleaves into two identical attached ova, both of which are viable for fertilization. Both ova are then fertilized, each by a different sperm, and the coalesced zygotes undergo further cell duplications developing as a chimeric blastomere. If this blastomere then undergoes a twinning event, two embryos will be formed, with different paternal genetic information and identical maternal genetic information. This results in a set of twins with identical gene sequence from the mothers side, but different sequences from the fathers side. Cells in each fetus carry chromosomes from either sperm, resulting in chimeras. This form had been speculated until only recently being recorded. In 2007, a study reported a case of a pair of living twins, which shared an identical set of maternal chromosomes, while each having a distinct set of paternal chromosomes, albeit from the same man, and thus they most likely share half of their fathers genetic makeup. The twins were both found to be chimeras. One was an intersex XX, and one a XY male.