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IPS164 Sam N.
establishing citizenship and inheritance rights. Proof of citizenship is required
in many countries for access to services such as health and education, and for
obtaining basic documents such as a national identity card, work permit,
passport, driver license, marriage license and social benefits. In addition, proof
of age is required for placement in school and other age-limited services and
is essential in preventing exploitation of children, for example through
underage marriage, child labor and underage induction into military service.
Statistics derived from births occurring during a given year and registered
during the allowable time period are extremely useful to governments.
Because birth registration is compulsory, birth statistics at any level from
national to local are not subject to sampling error; because registration takes
place at the time of birth the statistics are not subject to recall error. The fact
that registration is continuous means data are available for any time period,
without the need to organize and fund a periodic survey. These advantages
make birth statistics ideal for government, academic and private use. Birth data
are useful for identifying those in need of maternal and child health care
services, immunization services and others. In addition to planning for health
services, governments use birth statistics to plan for future needs for
education, transportation and many other community services. Birth
registration data are a key component of intercensal population estimates.
Birth counts serve as denominators for a number of essential demographic
and public health measures, such as the infant mortality rate, maternal
mortality rate, and immunization coverage rate. Given the multiplicity of uses
and applications of birth registration, the UN states that birth registration
should be universal, covering all groups including births to unwed mothers
and to ethnic minorities such as indigenous groups.

3. The challenge
Despite the acknowledged importance of birth registration, births of more
than a third of children under age 5 are not registered worldwide, and that
proportion is nearly two-thirds for children in the least developed countries.
2
The proportion of births registered within the first year of life, the requirement
for accurate birth statistics, will be lower yet. In addition, civil registration
systems, which include the registration of births, deaths and other vital events
have shown very slow improvement in the developing world in recent years,
or even recent decades.
2
For countries with deficient civil registration systems, birth registration
completeness is measured primarily via surveys, principally the Demographic
and Health Surveys (DHS) sponsored by USAID, and the Multiple Indicator
Cluster Surveys (MICS) sponsored by UNICEF. Using survey data for the years

2 United Nations Children’s Fund.
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