placestats

Birth registration vs. Fertility rate

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 166 countries, Birth registration and Fertility rate rise and fall together at r = -0.73 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.42 (q = 0.0081, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a moderate negative link remains.

Comparing countries across the middle half of fertility rate, 1.46 to 3.33 births per woman, birth registration is worse by 24.7% of children under 5 at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 18.6% of children under 5.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.734p = 2.2e-29 · 166 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.422p = 1.7e-8 · likely range [-0.54, -0.29]
p, allowing for regions0.003standard error 0.085 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.008across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Birth registration · % of children under 5link with income +0.87 · proxy
Fertility rate · births per womanlink with income -0.81 · proxy

Both of these rise and fall closely with national income, so a strong link between them before adjusting was close to certain. Read the adjusted figure, not the first one.

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Birth registration · % of children under 5 →Fertility rate · births per woman →2.7%100%0.976.03Afghanistan: 42.3% of children under 5, 4.76 births per womanAngola: 25% of children under 5, 5.05 births per womanAlbania: 98.4% of children under 5, 1.34 births per womanAndorra: 100% of children under 5, 1.09 births per womanUnited Arab Emirates: 100% of children under 5, 1.21 births per womanArgentina: 99.7% of children under 5, 1.5 births per womanArmenia: 99.3% of children under 5, 1.7 births per womanAustralia: 100% of children under 5, 1.48 births per womanAustria: 100% of children under 5, 1.31 births per womanBurundi: 83.5% of children under 5, 4.79 births per womanBelgium: 100% of children under 5, 1.44 births per womanBenin: 85.6% of children under 5, 4.48 births per womanBurkina Faso: 76.9% of children under 5, 4.11 births per womanBangladesh: 56% of children under 5, 2.14 births per womanBulgaria: 100% of children under 5, 1.72 births per womanBahrain: 100% of children under 5, 1.8 births per womanBelarus: 100% of children under 5, 1.22 births per womanBelize: 95.7% of children under 5, 2.02 births per womanBolivia: 91.9% of children under 5, 2.52 births per womanBrazil: 96.4% of children under 5, 1.61 births per womanBarbados: 98.7% of children under 5, 1.71 births per womanBrunei Darussalam: 99.9% of children under 5, 1.73 births per womanBhutan: 99.9% of children under 5, 1.45 births per womanBotswana: 87.5% of children under 5, 2.7 births per womanCentral African Republic: 44.8% of children under 5, 5.95 births per womanCanada: 100% of children under 5, 1.25 births per womanSwitzerland: 100% of children under 5, 1.29 births per womanChile: 99.4% of children under 5, 1.14 births per womanCote d'Ivoire: 71.7% of children under 5, 4.23 births per womanCameroon: 61.9% of children under 5, 4.26 births per womanCongo, Dem. Rep.: 40.1% of children under 5, 5.98 births per womanCongo, Rep.: 95.9% of children under 5, 4.11 births per womanColombia: 96.8% of children under 5, 1.63 births per womanComoros: 87.3% of children under 5, 3.82 births per womanCabo Verde: 91.4% of children under 5, 1.51 births per womanCosta Rica: 99.6% of children under 5, 1.32 births per womanCyprus: 100% of children under 5, 1.38 births per womanCzechia: 100% of children under 5, 1.36 births per womanGermany: 100% of children under 5, 1.36 births per womanDenmark: 100% of children under 5, 1.47 births per womanDominican Republic: 92.2% of children under 5, 2.22 births per womanAlgeria: 99.6% of children under 5, 2.72 births per womanEcuador: 87.2% of children under 5, 1.81 births per womanEgypt, Arab Rep.: 99.4% of children under 5, 2.73 births per womanSpain: 100% of children under 5, 1.1 births per womanEstonia: 100% of children under 5, 1.18 births per womanEthiopia: 2.7% of children under 5, 3.91 births per womanFinland: 100% of children under 5, 1.25 births per womanFiji: 86.6% of children under 5, 2.27 births per womanFrance: 100% of children under 5, 1.61 births per womanGabon: 89.6% of children under 5, 3.59 births per womanUnited Kingdom: 100% of children under 5, 1.55 births per womanGeorgia: 98.5% of children under 5, 1.8 births per womanGhana: 70.6% of children under 5, 3.34 births per womanGuinea: 62% of children under 5, 4.13 births per womanGambia, The: 59% of children under 5, 3.91 births per womanGuinea-Bissau: 46% of children under 5, 3.76 births per womanEquatorial Guinea: 53.5% of children under 5, 4.12 births per womanGreece: 100% of children under 5, 1.24 births per womanGuatemala: 96.4% of children under 5, 2.29 births per womanGuyana: 98.1% of children under 5, 2.4 births per womanHonduras: 97% of children under 5, 2.48 births per womanCroatia: 100% of children under 5, 1.46 births per womanHaiti: 84.8% of children under 5, 2.63 births per womanHungary: 100% of children under 5, 1.41 births per womanIndonesia: 77% of children under 5, 2.12 births per womanIndia: 89.1% of children under 5, 1.96 births per womanIreland: 100% of children under 5, 1.47 births per womanIran, Islamic Rep.: 98.6% of children under 5, 1.68 births per womanIraq: 98.8% of children under 5, 3.22 births per womanIceland: 100% of children under 5, 1.56 births per womanIsrael: 100% of children under 5, 2.87 births per womanItaly: 100% of children under 5, 1.18 births per womanJamaica: 98% of children under 5, 1.35 births per womanJordan: 98% of children under 5, 2.6 births per womanJapan: 100% of children under 5, 1.15 births per womanKazakhstan: 99.7% of children under 5, 2.98 births per womanKenya: 66.9% of children under 5, 3.17 births per womanKyrgyz Republic: 98.9% of children under 5, 2.6 births per womanCambodia: 73.3% of children under 5, 2.55 births per womanKiribati: 91.6% of children under 5, 3.12 births per womanLao PDR: 73% of children under 5, 2.4 births per womanLebanon: 98.9% of children under 5, 2.23 births per womanLiberia: 66.3% of children under 5, 3.86 births per womanSt. Lucia: 92% of children under 5, 1.39 births per womanLesotho: 44.5% of children under 5, 2.66 births per womanLithuania: 100% of children under 5, 1.11 births per womanLuxembourg: 100% of children under 5, 1.25 births per womanLatvia: 100% of children under 5, 1.24 births per womanMorocco: 96.9% of children under 5, 2.21 births per womanMoldova: 99.6% of children under 5, 1.73 births per womanMadagascar: 73.8% of children under 5, 3.91 births per womanMaldives: 98.8% of children under 5, 1.56 births per womanMexico: 97% of children under 5, 1.89 births per womanMarshall Islands: 83.8% of children under 5, 2.86 births per womanNorth Macedonia: 99.8% of children under 5, 1.4 births per womanMali: 86.7% of children under 5, 5.51 births per womanMalta: 100% of children under 5, 1.01 births per womanMyanmar: 81.3% of children under 5, 2.1 births per womanMontenegro: 99.4% of children under 5, 1.8 births per womanMongolia: 99.6% of children under 5, 2.5 births per womanMozambique: 55% of children under 5, 4.69 births per womanMauritania: 44.8% of children under 5, 4.63 births per womanMalawi: 67.2% of children under 5, 3.59 births per womanNamibia: 78.1% of children under 5, 3.21 births per womanNiger: 63.9% of children under 5, 5.93 births per womanNigeria: 42.6% of children under 5, 4.38 births per womanNicaragua: 84.7% of children under 5, 2.21 births per womanNetherlands: 100% of children under 5, 1.43 births per womanNorway: 100% of children under 5, 1.45 births per womanNepal: 77.2% of children under 5, 1.96 births per womanNaoero: 95.9% of children under 5, 3.29 births per womanNew Zealand: 100% of children under 5, 1.57 births per womanOman: 100% of children under 5, 2.51 births per womanPakistan: 42.2% of children under 5, 3.55 births per womanPanama: 96.7% of children under 5, 2.11 births per womanPeru: 96.4% of children under 5, 1.97 births per womanPhilippines: 91.8% of children under 5, 1.89 births per womanPapua New Guinea: 13.4% of children under 5, 3.07 births per womanPoland: 100% of children under 5, 1.14 births per womanPortugal: 100% of children under 5, 1.41 births per womanParaguay: 71% of children under 5, 2.42 births per womanWest Bank and Gaza: 99.2% of children under 5, 3.25 births per womanQatar: 100% of children under 5, 1.72 births per womanRomania: 100% of children under 5, 1.39 births per womanRussian Federation: 100% of children under 5, 1.42 births per womanRwanda: 85.6% of children under 5, 3.65 births per womanSaudi Arabia: 99.2% of children under 5, 2.31 births per womanSudan: 67.3% of children under 5, 4.26 births per womanSenegal: 78.7% of children under 5, 3.77 births per womanSingapore: 99.9% of children under 5, 0.97 births per womanSolomon Islands: 88% of children under 5, 3.51 births per womanSierra Leone: 90.4% of children under 5, 3.7 births per womanEl Salvador: 91.2% of children under 5, 1.77 births per womanSan Marino: 100% of children under 5, 1.16 births per womanSomalia, Fed. Rep.: 5.9% of children under 5, 6.01 births per womanSerbia: 99.9% of children under 5, 1.64 births per womanSao Tome and Principe: 98.6% of children under 5, 3.6 births per womanSuriname: 98.3% of children under 5, 2.23 births per womanSlovak Republic: 100% of children under 5, 1.46 births per womanSlovenia: 100% of children under 5, 1.52 births per womanSweden: 100% of children under 5, 1.43 births per womanEswatini: 53.5% of children under 5, 2.72 births per womanTurks and Caicos Islands: 99.2% of children under 5, 1.45 births per womanChad: 25.7% of children under 5, 6.03 births per womanTogo: 82.9% of children under 5, 4.12 births per womanThailand: 99.8% of children under 5, 1.2 births per womanTajikistan: 95.8% of children under 5, 3.04 births per womanTurkmenistan: 99.9% of children under 5, 2.66 births per womanTimor-Leste: 60.4% of children under 5, 2.63 births per womanTonga: 97.7% of children under 5, 3.1 births per womanTrinidad and Tobago: 96.5% of children under 5, 1.54 births per womanTunisia: 99.9% of children under 5, 1.82 births per womanTurkiye: 98.4% of children under 5, 1.48 births per womanTuvalu: 87.2% of children under 5, 3.17 births per womanTanzania: 26.4% of children under 5, 4.54 births per womanUganda: 32.2% of children under 5, 4.17 births per womanUkraine: 99.8% of children under 5, 0.988 births per womanUruguay: 99.8% of children under 5, 1.4 births per womanUnited States: 100% of children under 5, 1.63 births per womanViet Nam: 96.1% of children under 5, 1.9 births per womanVanuatu: 43.4% of children under 5, 3.57 births per womanSamoa: 66.9% of children under 5, 3.8 births per womanSouth Africa: 88.6% of children under 5, 2.21 births per womanZambia: 14% of children under 5, 4.04 births per womanZimbabwe: 48.7% of children under 5, 3.67 births per womanCOGETHMLIMLTNERPNGSGPSOMTCDUKRZMB

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted-0.7342.2e-29166
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted-0.8182.9e-41166
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income-0.4221.7e-8166
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income-0.3484.6e-6166

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 166 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.313 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.453 (without PNG) to -0.385 (without AGO). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: AGO (+0.037).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
East Asia & Pacific24-0.10
Europe & Central Asia47-0.29
Latin America & Caribbean26-0.36
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan18-0.46
Sub-Saharan Africa44-0.35

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third56-0.34
Middle third55-0.54
Richest third55-0.26

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians103-0.44
Muslims41-0.48

By last european coloniser

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
France23-0.49
Never a European colony17-0.37
Spain19-0.80
United Kingdom51-0.44

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.278 after dropping 16 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data


% of children under 5
births per woman		Years
United States USA100%1.632022, 2024
Sweden SWE100%1.432022, 2024
Slovenia SVN100%1.522022, 2024
Slovak Republic SVK100%1.462020, 2024
San Marino SMR100%1.162022, 2024
Russian Federation RUS100%1.422022, 2024
Romania ROU100%1.392020, 2024
Qatar QAT100%1.722020, 2024
Portugal PRT100%1.412020, 2024
Poland POL100%1.142017, 2024
Oman OMN100%2.512018, 2024
New Zealand NZL100%1.572022, 2024
Norway NOR100%1.452022, 2024
Netherlands NLD100%1.432022, 2024
Malta MLT100%1.012022, 2024

World Bank, World Development Indicators
World Bank, World Development Indicators

Sources

Birth registration

Completeness of birth registration (%)

UNICEF · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

A measure of how far the state reaches: whether it knows a child exists. Based on surveys and sparse. It is near 100 across the rich world, so all the variation is at the other end.

Fertility rate

Fertility rate, total (births per woman)

World Bank · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Birth registration and Fertility rate

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Birth registration changes Fertility rate, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Birth registration or Fertility rate