Birth and death registrations in India reached more than 99% of estimated births and deaths combined for the first time in India in 2024, according to this year’s Civil Registration System (CRS) report released on Wednesday by the Office of the Registrar General of India (ORGI), which works under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The CRS records all registered births and deaths in India. The number of registered births and deaths that appear in CRS reports always lags behind births and deaths estimated using fertility and death rates from the Survey-based Sample Registration System (SRS). This makes the level of birth and death registration exceeding 99% a landmark.
The CRS report shows that 25,473,389 births and 8,938,301 deaths were recorded in India in 2024, an increase of 1.1% and 3.2% from 2023 respectively. However, the report’s most interesting finding is what these recordings mean. The number of births and deaths per 1,000 population based on estimates from the SRS report for 2024 – released on 21 May – applied to the 2024 population projections indicates that there were 25,709,853 births and 8,991,424 births and deaths per year. This means that 99.1% and 99.4% of births and deaths have been recorded – the first time both figures have crossed the 99% mark.
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Certainly, the level of enrollment can look good even if the SRS underestimates birth and death rates or population projections underestimate population size. However, enrollment levels for 2024 still indicate significant improvement. The recent history of LOR clearly shows this. The LOR for births and deaths was 86.6% and 72.5% in 2014, and gradually improved to 94.1% and 95.1% in 2019. The lockdown affected the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, and saw the LOR for births drop to 91.8% and 91.7%, but the LOR rose to 99.9% and 99.7%. The LOR at birth was 96.5% and 98.4% in 2022 and 2023 and the LOR for death was 92.2% and 97.2%.
Moreover, while the national average was close to 100%, some states continued to languish. The LOR birth rate was in the range of 80%-90% in six states: Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh. LOR death was in this range in Uttar Pradesh and Assam. 50.7% and 62.1% in Jharkhand and Bihar.
However, the CRS report cautions against reading the statewide LOR mechanically. “The level of registration thus calculated is too high for some of the smaller states/union territories either due to lower estimates of vital events than the actual estimates or due to the fact that SRS estimates of vital events are based on usual place of residence while events are recorded at the place of occurrence irrespective of place of residence,” the report said.
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The rise in LOR at the national level is certainly not the only good news from the CRS for 2024. Registered deaths without medical care fell from 53.4% in 2023 to 52.5% in 2024. In contrast, institutional births rose from 74.7% in 2023 to 79.4% in 2024, the highest since 2019 when it was 81.2%. To be sure, NFHS data for 2023-2024, released May 29, estimates institutional births at 90.6% per year.
