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Cited by 52Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk ManagementGlobal Maternal and Child HealthCensus and Population Estimation

The civil registration system is a potentially viable data source for reliable subnational mortality measurement in India

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Rao, Chalapati, Gupta, Mamta·2020·BMJ Global Health
DOI 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002586PMC PMC7430426

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Abstract

Introduction: The Indian national Civil Registration System (CRS) is the optimal data source for subnational mortality measurement, but is yet under development. As an alternative, data from the Sample Registration System (SRS), which covers less than 1% of the national population, is used. This article presents a comparison of mortality measures from the SRS and CRS in 2017, and explores the potential of the CRS to meet these subnational data needs. Methods: Data on population and deaths by age and sex for 2017 from each source were used to compute national-level and state-level life tables. Sex-specific ratios of death probabilities in five age categories (0–4, 5–14, 15–29, 30–69, 70–84) were used to evaluate CRS data completeness using SRS probabilities as reference values. The quality of medically certified causes of death was assessed through hospital reporting coverage and proportions of deaths registered with ill-defined causes from each state. Results: The CRS operates through an extensive infrastructure with high reporting coverage, but child deaths are uniformly under-reported, as are female deaths in many states. However, at ages 30–69 years, CRS death probabilities are higher than the SRS values in 15 states for males and 10 states for females. SRS death probabilities are of limited precision for measuring mortality trends and differentials. Data on medically certified causes of death are of limited use due to low hospital reporting coverage. Conclusions: The Indian CRS is more reliable than the SRS for measuring adult mortality in several states. Targeted initiatives to improve the recording of child and female deaths, to strengthen the reporting and quality of medically certified causes of death, and to promote use of verbal autopsy methods can establish the CRS as a reliable source of subnational mortality statistics in the near future.

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  • Death registration was often slowly increasing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic but was disrupted during the early phase of the pandemic.

    “Often, registration was slowly increasing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic [6, 23], but was disrupted during the early phase of the pandemic.”

    From Estimates of pandemic excess mortality in India based on civil registration data (2022) · cites this paper as [23]

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  1. [6]Mahapatra P The sample registration system (SRS) in India: an overview, as of 2017. workshop on national CRVS verbal autopsy sampling strategies, 2017 Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326098440_The_Sample_Registration_System_SRS_in_India_An_Overview_as_of_2017

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Authors
Rao, C., & Gupta, M.
Affiliations
  • Australian National University (AU)
  • Alchemist Research and Data Analysis, Chandigarh, India
Corresponding author
Rao, Chalapati
ORCID
Venue
BMJ Global Health
Publisher
BMJ
Published
2020-08
Volume
5
Issue
8
Pages
e002586
ISSN
2059-7908 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002586
PMC
PMC7430426
OpenAlex
W3048543285
Cited by
52
References
21
Citations by year
2026: 7 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 2
FWCI
10.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • BMJ Global Health (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • medRxiv (acceptedVersion, public-domain)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
  • ANU Open Research (Australian National University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
Funders
University of Pennsylvania
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Global Maternal and Child Health
  • Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Census and Population Estimation
Keywords
civil registration, Sample Registration System, mortality data quality, female mortality, verbal autopsy, life tables, India
MeSH terms
Adult, Aged, Cause of Death, Child, Female, Humans, India, Male, Middle Aged, Information Storage and Retrieval

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