Re-registration of Births and Deaths
180. The Births Registration (Special Registers) Ordinance and the Deaths Registration (Special Registers) Ordinance provide for the re- registration of births and deaths recorded in registers destroyed or lost during the Japanese occupation. 71 births were re-registered during the year, and altogether 5,733 births and 66 deaths have now been re- registered under these two Ordinances.
Adoptions
181. An Adopted Children Register is maintained at the General Register Office under the Adoption Ordinance. Table XLIII shows the relationship of adopters to the children adopted under the Adoption Ordinance in the past five years with figures for the 5 years from 1st January 1960 to 31st December 1964 shown in brackets. The numbers of adoptions over the past decade have been as follows:
1960
1961
1962
1963
4
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
Total
:
:
Male
Female
Total
32
95
127
63
121
184
...
65
112
177
46
99
145
:
51
60
111
47
76
123
45
60
105
39
54
93
57
113
170
120
151
271
565
941
1,506
It will be seen from the above that after an almost unbroken series of drops in the number of adoptions registered each year from 1961 to 1967, the downward trend was reversed in 1968. The 1969 figure rose sharply to 271, exceeding the 1968 total by 101, an increase of about 60%. This increase is believed to be due partly to the fact that more Chinese adopters have come to realize the importance of an adoption certificate for their children, whom they previously adopted without re- sorting to formal proceedings. During the year, 52% of the children adopted were over 5 years old and 73% over 2 years old. This appears to indicate that quite a large number of these children were already admitted into the families of their adopters before adoption. Of the 1,718 children adopted since the Adoption Ordinance came into force,
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