🧭 Gender Gaps in Death Registration at the District Level (2021)

How wide is the gap in registering male and female deaths across India? NFHS-5 data show a consistent disadvantage for women, even after adjusting for household and socioeconomic characteristics.

📊 National Gender Gap

  • In 2021, India recorded a gender gap of 7.9 percentage points
    (95% Credible Interval: 7.4 – 8.3)
  • Female deaths were significantly less likely to be registered than male deaths.
  • The model adjusted for:
    • Education
    • Religion
    • Wealth
    • Caste
    • Household and asset ownership

📍 State-Level Highlights

Large gender gaps (>10 percentage points) were observed in:

  • Uttar Pradesh: 11.6 (CI: 10.9–12.2)
  • Bihar: 11.1 (CI: 10.4–11.8)
  • Jharkhand: 11.3 (CI: 10.6–12.0)
  • Telangana: 10.5 (CI: 9.3–11.7)

States with near gender parity:

  • Kerala: 1.0 (CI: 0.7–1.4)
  • Goa: 0.7 (CI: 0.2–1.5)

🗺️ Regional Patterns

🟩 Western India

  • 96% of districts: Male completeness >80%
  • 86.5%: Female completeness >80%
  • 71.6%: Gender gap ≤5%

🟦 Southern India

  • 78.1%: Males >80%
  • 65.6%: Females >80%
  • 17.2%: Gender gap between 10–15%

🟨 Northern India

  • 73.5%: Males >80%
  • 49.3%: Females >80%
  • 22.8%: Gender gap >10–15%

🟥 Central, Eastern & Northeast

  • Central: 23.6% males vs. 6.8% females >80%
  • Northeast: 17.3% males vs. 8.7% females >80%
  • Eastern: 21.7% males vs. 9.5% females >80%
  • Many districts show gaps between 10–15 percentage points

🧩 District-Level Inequalities

  • 241 districts had gender gaps of 10–15 percentage points
  • Northern states dominate this list

🔸 Examples

  • Rajasthan: Alwar (14.1), Dausa (13.8), Karauli (13.5)
  • Uttarakhand: Tehri Garhwal (13.1)
  • Haryana: Mewat (12.1)
  • Uttar Pradesh: Ballia (13.3), Aligarh (13.2), Bareilly (13.1) — total 69 high-gap districts
  • Bihar: Munger (13.0), Bhojpur (12.8)
  • Madhya Pradesh: Chhatarpur (12.7)
  • Chhattisgarh: Bilaspur (12.5)
  • Jharkhand: Purbi Singhbhum (12.9), Dhanbad (12.7)
  • West Bengal: Puruliya (12.9)
  • Odisha: Mayurbhanj (12.3)
  • Telangana: Jayashankar (13.6), Karimnagar (12.7), Medak (12.6)

Other notable districts include Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Raichur (Karnataka).

Figure 3. Completeness of Death Registration in India by Gender at the District Level (NFHS-5)

Figure 4. Gender Gap in Completeness of Death Registration in India at the District Level (NFHS-5)

🧮 Total and Direct Effects of Gender on Death Registration (2015 & 2020)

This analysis uses state-level data from NFHS-4 (2015–16) and NFHS-5 (2019–21) to estimate the total and direct effects of gender on the completeness of death registration in 2015 and 2020.
Since NFHS-4 did not include data on death registration, we used completeness estimates at the level of larger states, derived from Civil Registration and SRS data (see Objective 1).

📊 Key Findings

  • In 2015, men were 8.62 percentage points more likely to have their deaths registered than women
    (95% Credible Interval: 8.37 – 8.91)
  • In 2020, the gap narrowed slightly to 8.34 percentage points
    (95% CI: 8.05 – 8.61)

🔄 Mediation by Household Asset Ownership

We examined how much of the gender gap could be explained by household ownership of land or housing (a proxy for female material empowerment).

In 2015:

  • 15.0% of the gender gap was mediated through asset ownership
  • Direct effect of gender: 7.33 percentage points
    (CI: 7.07 – 7.60)

In 2020:

  • Only 3.12% of the gap was mediated through ownership
  • Direct effect of gender: 8.08 percentage points
    (CI: 7.79 – 8.36)

Figure 5. Total and Direct Effects of Gender on Death Registration Completeness (2015 & 2020)