Completeness of India's sample registration system: an assessment using the general growth balance method.

In the preceding issue of this journal, a generalized version of the Brass growth balance method was proposed that made it applicable to populations that are not stable and are open to migration. In this companion paper, the results of applying this new procedure to data from India's Sample Registration system for the decades 1971-80 and 1981-90 are discussed. The results at the national level show that, during the decade 1981-90, 5 percent of the deaths among men, 12 percent of the deaths among women, and about 7 percent of births were being missed by the system. Further, it is estimated that the level of under-enumeration in the 1991 Census was more than that of the 1981 Census by 0.7 percent for males and 1.4 percent for females. The paper also presents results for major Indian states.