📌 Conclusion
📈 Progress with Persistent Gaps
India has made significant strides in improving the completeness of death registration, increasing from 70% in 2014 to 89.3% in 2021. However, this progress has been uneven—gender disparities not only persist but have widened over time.
Even as both male and female registration rates improved, the gender gap grew from 10.1% to 13.5% between 2014 and 2021.
🧩 Gender Effects and Shifting Mediators
Using state-level mediation models, we observed that in 2015, asset ownership explained 15% of the gender gap in registration. By 2020, this contribution dropped to just 3.1%, indicating that structural factors beyond wealth are driving gender inequality in death registration.
💬 Policies like the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana may have increased women’s asset ownership—but property alone isn’t enough to close the gap.
🗺️ Spatial Inequality and Gender Bias
Regions already known for low overall registration, such as Northern, Central, and Eastern India, also show the highest gender gaps. This suggests that geography and gender inequality intersect, creating deep-rooted barriers to accurate mortality reporting.
Despite improvements, CRS completeness remains under 90%, and cause-of-death information is often missing or unreliable. In some states, however, CRS has outperformed SRS, showing its future potential.
🔍 Final Takeaway
🧾 Death registration is more than a statistic—it’s a record of existence.
To make the Civil Registration System inclusive and accurate, India must tackle both administrative weaknesses and gendered barriers. Future reforms should be grounded in social equity, ensuring every life is counted and valued.