Registrar-Generals-Department-Annual-report-1972-1973 — Page 64

to 1972-73, from which it will be seen that no less than 77,252 have been registered in the 28 years since the war. The decline in the number of such registrations since 1962-63, except in 1967-68, is due partly to the back-log of unregistered births which occurred during and immediately after the war having been greatly reduced, and partly to the fact that for many years past only a small percentage of births have not been registered soon after the birth.

182. Table XXXVIII gives the number of births post-registered in 1972-73 more than one year after birth by sex and age group. This reveals that of the 1,366 post-registrations 588 were in respect of males and 778 in respect of females. The preponderance of females appears to indicate that more care was taken at the time of birth to register males than females. The age group with the highest number of post- registrations was the 1-4 group, and the second highest the 5-9 group. As compared with the previous year, cases in respect of persons under 20 years of age decreased by 400 to 1,227, and cases relating to persons of 20 and over also decreased by 99 to 139.

183. The 934 births post-registered after one year at the urban district registries were partly in respect of cases where the parents had neglected to register the birth, or had been unable to do so owing to there being no facilities during the war, and partly in respect of cases where the birth was believed to have been registered, but owing to the loss during the war of the register in question and the birth certificate issued at the time, no record of the birth was extant.

184. In addition to the post-registration fee, stamp duty of $3 was payable on each supporting statutory declaration. In the course of the year the three teams collected a total of $1,563 in respect of stamp duty on such declarations.

Deaths Registered

185. Table XXXIX gives the number of deaths registered in the years 1963 to 1972 by sex and race, with the relevant percentages. The number of deaths registered in 1972 was, as compared with 1971, up 892 to 21,145 (56.33% being of males, 43.66% being of females, and 0.01% being of unknown sex), comprising 20,857 Chinese (11,709 males, 9,146 females and 2 unknown sex) and 288 non-Chinese (201 males and 87 females).

186. Table XL gives the numbers of deaths registered by district in 1970, 1971 and 1972. It shows that of the 21,145 deaths in 1972, 6,408

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