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100 Years of the
Registrar General
in Northern Ireland: Article 4
100 Years of Adoptions

100 Years of Adoptions and Gender Recognitions in Northern Ireland

Vital Statistics Unit (VSU) meet statutory requirements for the General Register Office (GRO) to provide headline data and analysis on vital event registrations completed each calendar year to the Northern Ireland Assembly. While VSU can access most registration data at an individual level, and produce detailed analysis on births, deaths and marriages, there are other closed registrations where VSU cannot access the personal level data but report high level summary data as provided by GRO. The following article is part of the RG100 series and summarises this headline information for such closed registrations, namely adoptions and gender recognition registrations.


Chart 1: Adoptions in Northern Ireland, 1931 to 2023

Chart 1 shows the number of adoptions completed in Northern Ireland each year from 1931 up to 2023. The highest number of adoptions was in 1970 when 554 were completed. The lowest number of recorded adoptions was in 1931 with 48 adoptions, however the lowest number in recent years was in 2021 with just 77 adoptions. Some reported reasons for falling adoption rates in recent years include the increase of kinship care placements, improvements in fertility treatments and the cost of living crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic is also likely to have impacted on adoption processes in 2020-2021.


Chart 2: Adoptions by Sex, 2016 to 2023


Chart 2 shows a breakdown by sex of adoptions completed between 2016 and 2023. Over this time it has been relatively balanced between boys and girls. However, while similar, the number of adoptions of boys have been slightly higher than girls in all but one year (2017). Interestingly, in 2022, there were the exact same number of adoptions of males as there were females, with 62 adoptions occurring for each sex that year.


Chart 3: Adoptions by Age Group, 2019 to 2023


NISRA have only recently started to report on adoptions by age group, so analysis is only available from 2018. Chart 3 shows that the majority of adoptions occur in children aged between 0 and 5 years old, at an average of 71 per cent over the last 5 years. The fewest adoptions occur in the 11 years and above age group with an average of just 9% of adoptions over the five years.


Chart 4: Gender Recognition Registrations, 2005 to 2023


The General Register Office in Northern Ireland maintains a register of gender recognition applications since the Gender Recognition Act 2004 came into effect on 1 April 2005. The act allows individuals aged over 18 who have lived in their acquired fender for at least 2 years and plan to live permanently in that gender to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate. Chart 4 shows the number of registrations completed each year since the implementation in 2005. As small numbers are involved there is a level of volatility in the number of registrations, however the highest levels can be seen in both the first complete calendar year (21 registrations in 2006) and the most recent full year of data (20 registrations in 2023).


Registrar General
Annual Report 2023
Q12024

The 102nd Annual Report of the Registrar General was laid before the Assembly and simultaneously published at 9.30am on 21 November 2024.


The Annual Report of the Registrar General contains information relating to births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships registered with the General Registry Office during the calendar year 2023. It also contains information on stillbirths, adoptions and re-registrations.


Key Points
In 2023…

  • there were 19,962 births registered.
  • there were 67 Stillbirths and 80 Infant deaths registered.
  • there were 17,254 deaths registered.
  • there were 17,254 deaths registered. Accidents was the leading cause of death in younger age groups, ischaemic heart disease was top among those aged 55 to 79 and in the 80 and over group the leading cause was dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
  • there were 7,494 Marriages registered.
  • there were 39 civil partnerships registered.
  • there were 107 adoptions registered and 450 births re-registered.


    • The tables are available from the Registrar General Annual Report(Opens in new tab) section of the website.


    Hard copies will be available from Vital Statistics Unit and can be requested here.

    RG 2023 Headline
    RG 2023 Headline

    Excess Deaths Methodology
    Information Paper Published
    RG

    Excess Deaths Methodology – Why the Change? Information Paper Published

    On Monday 20th January 2025 NISRA has published a supplementary, user-friendly explainer piece on the change in methodology used to calculate expected deaths, and how the new model-based approach offers a more reliable estimate of excess deaths.

    The paper demonstrates the link between mortality numbers, population size and an ageing population. An increase in population size with an ageing population increases the number of deaths.


    Excess Deaths Information
    Excess Deaths Information


    The paper takes a look first at the population in Northern Ireland has changed over the last few decades.
    Not only has the Northern Ireland population has both increased in size over the last two decades, but more of the population is accounted for by older age groups where mortality is highest.

    Chart 1: Population pyramid chart for Northern Ireland by single year of age, 2003 and 2023

    Chart 1

    While the NI population grew by 12.9% between 2003 and 2023, the growth rates for different age groups have varied, giving rise to changes in the fraction of the population at each age group. Over this period, the proportion of the population accounted for by people aged less than 20 fell by around 3.7 percentage points, from 28.9% to 25.1%. The share aged 20 to 69 increased slightly by 0.6 percentage points (from 61.6% to 62.2%) over the same period. However, the proportion of the population in the highest age group, 70 and above increased by 3.2 percentage points, from 9.5% to 12.7% of the population. This is a demonstration of an ageing population, and indicates a larger group is at greater mortality risk in 2023 than in 2003.


    Chart 2: Age-specific death rates per 1,000 population, 2003 and 2023

    Chart 2

    Chart 2 compares the age specific death rates for Northern Ireland in 2003 (left hand panel) and 2023 (right hand panel). The pattern of lower (higher) death rates among younger (older) people is apparent in both years. However, it also shows reductions in age-specific death rates in most age groups over this period, particularly among the older age groups. For example, for those 85 and over, the age specific death rate was 171.3 per 1,000 population in 2003, dropping to 150.7 in 2023.


    Overall Impact

    Despite improving mortality rates over time, the number of deaths has still increased with the change in size and age of the population being the main driving force from 14,462 in 2003, to 17,254 in 2023.


    Impact
    Impact


    How accounting for this increases accuracy

    The model for estimating expected deaths is designed specifically to account for changes sizes and age profiles of the population while also adjusting for changes in mortality rates, which is something the old, 5-year average approach did not do.

    Directly comparing the old, ‘5-year average’ method for expected deaths with the model-based approach demonstrates greater accuracy of the model in estimating expected deaths, which in turn increases the accuracy of estimated excess deaths.

    Chart 3: Registered and expected deaths, 2011 to 2023

    Chart 3

    The two different methods for forecasting deaths differ in their performance, as measured by the difference between the actual and the forecast series. Chart 3 shows that the previous 5-year average method had a considerable degree of ‘error’ from the observed number of deaths for much of the period between 2014 and 2023. It also illustrates that the direction of this error was almost always negative: that is in eight of the nine years between 2011 and 2019, this measure underestimated the registered number of deaths. As a consequence, this measure produced estimates of excess deaths that were systematically higher than they should be for almost a decade.

    Although the new method does not predict the level of actual deaths exactly over this period, the estimates it produced are closer to the actual number of deaths registered in nine of the thirteen years presented. Chart 3 also demonstrates that this method was not systematically biased in either direction: in four of the pre-pandemic years it over-estimated deaths, and in five it underestimated them. Both methods showed less accuracy during the pandemic as neither were designed for predicting mortality in such a unique situation.

    The comparison presented in the information paper of observed deaths with expected deaths using each of the methods has demonstrated less error associated with the new method particularly in terms of reflecting size and age structure of the population. This increase in accuracy, particularly in the upper age groups is important to understanding why this new method is a useful step forward.

    Conclusion

    While the new model-based method may be less transparent to general users than the previous approach due to the multiplicity of factors and interactions it accounts for, this can be justified by the greater accuracy it offers in terms of estimating expected deaths in a given time period under ‘usual’ circumstances (i.e. absence of a pandemic or other major health situations) and in turn, the accuracy of the estimates of excess deaths.

    Registrar General Quarterl
    Tables 2024 Quarter 3
    Q3

    The Quarter 3 (July to September) 2024 Registrar General Quarterly Tables were published this morning at 9.30am on 25 February.

    Key Points
  • The statistics show a provisional total of 4,091 deaths registered in quarter three of 2024.
  • At a high level there were 1,147 (28.0%) deaths due to cancer, 931 (22.8%) deaths due to circulatory disease, and 478 (11.7%) deaths due to respiratory diseases (excluding Covid-19 deaths).
  • Looking in more detail the leading cause of death for all persons in Northern Ireland in quarter three, 2024 was dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. This was also true for females but for males the leading cause of death was ischaemic heart disease.
  • The expected deaths for quarter three of 2024 was estimated at 4,406. The relative number of excess deaths based on the expected deaths for quarter three of 2024 was estimated at -315.
  • The age-specific death rates show the clear relationship between mortality and age Death rates range from 0.07 to 6.10 (deaths per 1,000 population of the relative age group) for age groups up to 55 to 64, however, the rates for age groups above are much higher, with 100.37 for 85 to 89 year olds and to 214.51 for those aged 90 and over.
  • A total of 2,905 marriages were registered in quarter three of 2024, and 13 civil partnerships.
  • The number of births registered in quarter three of 2024 was 4,914. Although the latest quarter has shown an increase of 84 in the number of births from the previous quarter, the overall trend for over a decade is still a downward one.


    • Tables are available in Registrar General Quarterly Report.

    Other announcements

    Previous publications

    Please find released publications. Please note: all links open in a new tab.

    User engagement

    We welcome any feedback you may have which you can provide through our online survey at the link below:
    Vital Statistics User Survey 2024/2025 (Opens in new tab)

    The findings from the 2023/2024 survey are available here (opens in new tab).

    We would urge all users to please share their views on the outputs they use and to highlight any information needs that are not currently being met.

    All feedback is welcome throughout the year.

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    BT9 5RR
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