Countries With the Lowest Birth Registration

Every country with a figure for birth registration, ranked from lowest to highest. The top three are Ethiopia (2.7%), Somalia, Fed. Rep. (5.9%) and Papua New Guinea (13.4%). The middle country of the 172 has 97.7%.

What this measures

Completeness of birth registration (%), in % of children under 5. Source: UNICEF. For this measure, higher is better.

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.

This measure mostly follows how rich a country is, so this ranking is close to a ranking by national income. Each country’s page also ranks it against countries with similar incomes, which is often the fairer comparison.

The full ranking

Each country’s latest figure, from 2010–2022. The year beside each value says when it was measured.

More on birth registration

• Countries With the Highest Birth Registration
• Birth registration by country: trend over time and what it goes with

Related rankings

• Countries With the Lowest Corruption Perceptions Index
• Countries With the Lowest Political Rights (FH)
• Countries With the Lowest Civil Liberties (FH)
• Countries With the Lowest Trust in Government
• Countries With the Lowest Pre-trial Detainee Shares
• Countries With the Lowest Refugees Originating
• Countries With the Lowest Electoral Democracy
• Countries With the Lowest Liberal Democracy

A ranking describes countries, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All country rankings.