IMPROVING LIVES THROUGH DATA ECOSYSTEMS

This statistical release presents information on recorded live births in South Africa, based on information received from the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). It focuses on current birth registrations and occurrences of live births for 2022 recorded for a period of 14 months (from January 2022 to February 2023). Furthermore, it covers information on late birth registrations that occurred in 2021 and earlier years, but were captured between January 2022 and February 2023.

The results show that a total of 998 362 births were registered in South Africa in 2022. Of these, 911 986 (91,3%) were births that occurred and were registered in 2022 (current birth registrations), while 86 376 (8,7%) were births that occurred in the previous years and registered in 2022. There were 459 613 males and 452 368 female births that took place in 2022 and registered the same year.

Registration within 30 days increased by 3,4% between 2021 and 2022, while late registrations of birth after the lapse of 30 days but before end of the year decreased from 19,7% in 2021 to 15,8% in 2022.

A total of 43 604 births occurred to mothers aged 17 years and younger, of these, 20 607 were aged 17 years, while 3 598 were between 10 to 14 years old at the time of giving birth. As in previous years’ women aged 20-34 years accounted for 70,1% of all births in 2022.

Although the highest percentage of birth occurrences were observed in the two most populous provinces, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng both at 21,7%, when population size is taken into account, the highest proportion of birth occurrences were recorded in Limpopo province at 1,8% and the lowest in the Western Cape (1,3%). Most births occurred in the months of March (9,2%), January (8,9%) and September (8,8%) and the least number of births occurred in October and November both at 7,7%.

In 2022, the most popular name amongst baby girls was Onalerona, while amongst boys Lethabo was dominant. Junior and Precious were common second names for boys and girls respectively. Dlamini followed by Ndlovu and Nkosi were still the top three most common surname amongst babies born and registered in 2022, as was the case in previous years.