3 min read

We know that unequal access to civil registration worldwide is disadvantageous to citizens, restricting their access to essential support, and making them vulnerable to unscrupulous factions. So, how can Inequality Assessment in Civil Registration help break barriers worldwide?

Meeting the 2030 Civil Registration targets

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set targets to ensure no one is left behind in the future. Legal identity provides access to social support, and this starts with birth registration.  

In addition, governments must identify the groups including hard-to-reach and marginalized populations and particular geographic areas and administrative subdivisions to introduce evidence-based policies and strategic interventions. Marginalized, stigmatized, vulnerable, or remote subpopulations often have lower birth and death registration rates and are underrepresented in cause of death data. As a result of this under registration accesso to their social protections and state benefits is limited, negatively impacting the overall performance and accuracy of a country’s CRVS system and vital statistics data. 

How to assess disparities in CRVS records

Using an inequality assessment can provide this missing, vital knowledge by evaluating the extent of coverage in a CRVS system amongst different groups in a population. Additionally, inequality assessments can also evaluate CRVS system coverage among different population groups based on demographic attributes like age, gender, location, socioeconomic factors, and ethnicity. This involves comparing state-held data with similar datasets collected simultaneously, estimating the true number of citizens, identifying unregistered individuals, and understanding their demographic profiles. 

Methods for Using Data:

• Coverage Assessment: Utilize data sources that directly capture vital event registration, such as household surveys with questions on birth registration. 

• Completeness Estimation: Estimate expected vital events for different population groups and compare them with CRVS records, requiring significant demographic expertise. 

Using existing secondary data sources like censuses, household surveys, health information systems, demographic surveillance sites, and sample registration sites is a cost-effective approach. Effective inequality assessments need data availability, access, and inter-agency data sharing. Secondary data sources may have limitations, such as underrepresentation of small or marginalized groups, so data triangulation may be necessary. 

How the Asia-Pacific region is addressing the challenge together

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) is supporting inequality assessments as part of its “Get Everyone in the Picture” initiative, to help its member countries to meet the 2030 targets. 

Regional capacity-building workshops have taken place to strengthen analytical skills, and the number of countries that have completed their inequality assessment is increasing. 

The 2023 CRVS Inequality Assessment for Lao PDR  

This quantitative inequality assessment in Civil Registration highlights disparities in birth and death registration, emphasizing the need for improved data accuracy and completeness to ensure legal identity and access to state benefits for all. Specifically, the assessment found significant improvements in birth registration completeness, from 37% in 2011-12 to 75% in 2017, with higher rates in urban areas and among wealthier households. Finally, death registration rates were higher for females compared to males. As a result, recommendations include regular publication of vital statistics, enhanced data-sharing between government agencies, and ongoing inequality assessments to address gaps and improve CRVS system quality.  

Fiji’s evidence-based Parental Assistance Program

Fiji was the first known country to carry out an in-depth quantitative assessment to uncover the demographic indicators that would enable them to make policy interventions to bridge the gap in registration. Comparing demographic indicators in separate data sources, they were able to determine that ethnicity had the biggest impact on non-registration, and also that teenage mothers across all ethnicities were least likely to participate.  

This insight led to a quick intervention, the Parental Assistance Payment Program, to incentivize registration, between 2018 and 2020. Most importantly, overall registrations increased but doubled amongst the iTaukei population and tripled for single mothers. 

Recommended action points for governments

If you’ve yet to start an inequality assessment in your country, there’s still time. 

1. 1. First, assess the capabilities of your CRVS system to support an inequality assessment. If your system is manual or outdated, we can help. Our HERA solution not only streamlines registration, it also houses powerful analytics to support your planning, processing, and decision-making. 
   2. Secondly, locate state-held data and equivalent external datasets. These must be from the same period and cover similar demographic indicators to enable the highest possible degree of accurate comparison. 
   3. Once you have carried out the inequality assessment, look for demographic attributes where there is distinctly lower representation in state-held data compared to the level indicated by the external data sources you’ve used. These are the first groups on which you must concentrate your initial policy interventions. 

Contact us to find out more about how WCC can support you in meeting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.