Birth registration coverage for poor and disadvantaged people

There are persistent gaps in birth registration coverage between those in poverty and the rest of the population. In the years 2000–2015, birth registration coverage for children aged under five living in the poorest 20% of households increased from 29% to 49%. In contrast, registration coverage for children in the rest of the population increased from 58% to 80% (see Figure 2).

Between 2007 and 2011, the gap between the poorest 20% of households and the rest of the population fell.^[4] However, since 2011 the gap has begun to increase again and if trends continue children living in the poorest households will continue to be left behind (see Figure 3).

Increasing gaps in birth registration coverage for children are also evident when considering the mother’s level of education. Since 2000, birth registration coverage has improved the most for children with mothers who have a primary level of education, closing the gap between those with higher levels of education. Figure 4 shows that children born to mothers with little or no schooling are being left behind. Almost half of these children remained unregistered during the period surveyed.

Similar patterns are seen when the education level of fathers is considered. However, research by Data2x has shown that a child’s registration is more likely to be determined by their mother’s level of education than by that of their father.^[5]

Previous research by DI and the Overseas Development Institute found that subnational financing is not well targeted towards the poorest regions, in addition there is little evidence of a progressive allocation of education resources by governments to the regions with the worst education outcomes and no consistent trend among donors.^[6]

The poorest people often face multiple and intersecting deprivations, for example poor nutrition and low levels of education are mutually reinforcing and pass poverty from one generation to the next. For birth registration, inequalities are more extreme when low education and poverty levels intersect. The impact of increasing the education level of the mother is lessened for those living in the poorest 20% of households. Figure 5 shows that the rate of registration for the children of uneducated mothers falls a further 10% (compared to Figure 4) if they are also in one of the poorest 20% of households.

Women and girls may be especially impacted, as previous research has shown that birth registration is negatively correlated with early marriage, young age at birth of the first child and wider adverse health outcomes.^[7]

Geographical location can also have an impact on those already left behind by lack of birth registration, poverty and low education levels. Figure 6 illustrates that the poorest people, living in rural areas with lower levels of education face the greatest challenge and are the populations that development programme and domestic services find arguably the hardest to reach.

Furthermore, detailed country-level data shows that populations with the lowest levels of birth registration are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, often in fragile and conflict affected contexts, where extreme poverty persists (see Figure 7). Over 80% of the poorest children aged under five have no birth registration in Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Chad, Zambia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Bangladesh and Nigeria.

Some countries have made improvements in birth registration coverage for the poorest, however significant conflict and civil unrest has resulted in the proportion of registered births falling below 50% in several central African countries, most notably the Central African Republic, Cameroon and Zimbabwe (see Figure 8). There have also been reported decreases in coverage for the poorest in the Democratic Republic of Congo (from 34% in 2000 to 24% in 2015) and even more starkly in Guinea–Bissau where the impact of conflict, corruption and ongoing instability as seen the birth registration rates for the poorest children drop from 41% in 2000 to only 2% in 2015.

There is a growing recognition that – with a third of people in extreme poverty worldwide living in countries with recurrent crisis^[8] – there is a need to build greater coherence across development, humanitarian and peace sectors.^[9] Recent analysis from DI looked specifically at how two donors (Sweden and the UK) were delivering on this. While there are challenges to integrating approaches there are also clear benefits of joint planning; for example, harmonising approaches between humanitarian, development and peace actors could form the basis of plans to deliver sustainable foundational data systems, such as civil registration, in protracted crisis contexts.^[10]