Declining trend in the number of registered births seen in EV

By PSA-8
November 10, 2022

TACLOBAN CITY – According to the latest Vital Statistics Report (January – December 2021) which was released on 13 August 2022, the number of registered live births by place of occurrence in Eastern Visayas is 56,105. This figure represents the total number of live births from the provinces of Biliran, Eastern Samar, Leyte, Northern Samar, Samar, Southern Leyte, and the highly urbanized City of Tacloban.

Figure 1 shows that there is a declining trend in the number of registered live births in Eastern Visayas from 2015 to 2021. The number of registered live births in 2021 is lower by 2,542 (4.3%) from the registered live births of 58,647 in 2020. Since 2015, the peak of the 10-year period, the number of live births is declining by an average rate of 4.9 percent annually, except in 2019 when a brief period of an upward spike occurred. The number of registered live births in 2021 is 29.0 percent lower than the 2015 record with 76,322 registered live births. (see Table 1)

Among the six provinces and one highly urbanized city, the province of Leyte had the greatest number of registered live births by place of occurrence from January to December 2021, with 22,929 or 40.9% of the total registered live births in Region VIII. Leyte was followed by the province of Samar, with 9,795 (17.5%) registered live births. Northern Samar comes next, with 7,211 registered live births (12.9%). Biliran has the least number of registered live births with only 2,344 (4.2%), nearly 10 times fewer than Leyte’s figure. The City of Tacloban, a highly urbanized city has registered live births totaling 3,379 (6.0%). (Figure 2 and Table 2)

September recorded highest number of registered births

Figure 3 shows that the month of September had the highest number of live births in Eastern Visayas, totaling to 5,527 live births in 2021. September was followed by October, with 5,484 registered live births. The month of February observed the least number of 3,520 registered live births. (see Table 3)

More males born than females

Eastern Visayas reported 2,165 (4.0%) more male registered live births than female live births, after recording 29,135 male births and 26,970 female births in 2021. This resulted to a sex ratio of 108 males per 100 female births. (see Figure 4 and Table 2)