Home Ministry data shows more under-25 deaths in 2022 than in 2021
The 2022 Sample Registration System reveals perplexing higher death rates among under-25s in India, contrasting with Civil Registration System data.
The Sample Registration System (SRS) is considered to be the most authoritative statistical source on births and mortality in India, especially the latter. However, the 2022 SRS numbers on deaths, which were released on June 12, are quite perplexing, to put it mildly, for two reasons. One, they suggest that significantly more under-25 people died in 2022 than not just in 2021 but also on average in the three years before the Covid-19 pandemic. Two, this trend is in contrast with what is seen in the total registered deaths as seen in the Civil Registration System (CRS) data for 2022.
The SRS is the official source of crude death rate (CDR) or number of deaths per thousand population in India. It is conducted by the Registrar General of India, the nodal agency which works under the home ministry and is also responsible for conducting the census in India. The SRS has been conducted since 1969-70, and currently works on a sampling frame of more than 8000 units (parts of villages and towns) covering more than 8 million people.
2022 SRS gives an all-India CDR of 6.8, significantly lower than the 2021 number which was 7.5. The fall in CDR between 2021 and 2022 is intuitive, given the fact that 2021 was the deadliest year of the pandemic, and is estimated to have led to around two million extra deaths compared to the 2017-19 average. However, what is surprising about the 2022 CDR number is that it is still significantly higher than all years until 2013 except 2021.
The 2022 death rate of 6.8 applied to the projected population for the year projects 9.38 million deaths in the year. If the death rate in the year was six, as in 2019, the year immediately preceding the pandemic, there would have been 8.28 million deaths in 2022. Estimated deaths in 2022 are also around 1.1 million more than the average estimated deaths for 2017-19 period.
What is even more perplexing about the mortality data in 2022 SRS is that the higher overall death rate is a result of death rates rising among people under 25 years (except the under-five age group) not just compared to 2021, but also the three-year pre-pandemic average. Death rates for older age groups have actually declined in 2022 compared to 2021, which is understandable given the excess mortality within these cohorts due to Covid-19 pandemic in 2021.
The 2022 SRS death rates for the under-25 age groups look even more counterintuitive when read with the 2022 CRS numbers. The latter show a decline in deaths from 2021 CRS for almost all age groups. To be sure, the CRS analysis excluded Maharashtra, as the 2021 CRS did not publish age-wise death registrations for the state.
What explains the rise in death rate in 2022 SRS data compared to 2021 for the younger population? We know what does not. Did more people die from things such as accidents and suicides in 2022 than 2021 or the three-year pre-pandemic average? Another set of statistics from the home ministry show that this cannot explain the rise in death rate in 2022. National Crime Record Bureau’s Accidental Deaths and Suicides (ADSI) data records 430,504 and 170,924 deaths from accidents (including natural ones, such as heat strokes or avalanches) and suicides in 2022. This number was 397,530 and 164,033 in 2021; 421,104 and 139,123 in 2019; and an average 409,837 and 134,509 during the 2017-19 period. At best this can account for 57,082 thousand extra deaths and not the 1.1 million number which emerges from a comparison of 2022 SRS with the 2017-19 SRS or applying 2019 death rate to 2022 population projection.
The other factor which could explain the otherwise perplexing trend of more young people dying in 2022 than in 2021 or than the 2017-19 average could be some sampling discrepancy in the 2022 SRS numbers. But this is difficult to establish without access to the unit-level data which the SRS does not publish.
The Home Ministry refused to answer an HT query on why the SRS shows a higher death rate for under-25 people in 2022 than 2021 or pre-pandemic years.
