Six millionth baby registered in New Zealand

The number of births registered in New Zealand hit the six million mark on 29 May 2015.

The six millionth birth to be registered in New Zealand is that of a little girl from Auckland called Ava. Parents Kerry and Oliver said they were surprised at the news that their little girl’s registration was the six millionth. Life had been hectic since the birth of their second child so they had taken advantage of the option to register the birth online. “We certainly were not expecting a call from Internal Affairs,“ says Kerry.

Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages Jeff Montgomery said that records of births have been maintained for the last 167 years. Compulsory registration of births began in 1847, and extended to Maori births in 1913.

“There were just over 500 births registered in 1848. By the turn of the twentieth century nearly 20,000 births were registered each year and, by 1950, this number more than doubled to 51,000 births registered each year,” says Mr Montgomery.

Mr Montgomery said that both parents of a child born in New Zealand must jointly notify a birth as soon as is reasonably practicable. This is generally deemed as being within two months of the birth.

“On average, Internal Affairs staff now register about 1,000 births each week, and each year around 60,000 births are registered in New Zealand.”

“The entire process of registering a birth has changed significantly. Right up till the 1960s, records were painstakingly handwritten and then until the late 1990s typewriters were used. All new registrations since 1998 are fully computerised and by June 2002 the old paper-based records had been digitised. Now these records are held incomputerised data systems that enable staff to search millions of records electronically,” says Mr Montgomery.

Mr Montgomery says that the way parents register their babies is getting easier as well.

“In March this year we introduced the online birth registration process. To date, more than 8,000 online registrations have been received.”

“Further improvements are in the pipeline to enable parents to securely register their baby’s birth from a laptop, tablet or computer as soon as their child is born, or at a time that is convenient for them. They will then be able to use their digital birth registration to digitally access services from a range of agencies without needing to get a paper copy of their birth certificate,” Mr Montgomery said.

Information on registering births as well as information on how to access information on the various registers is available on the Department’s Births, Deaths and Marriages website.

Number of births registered in New Zealand/Year

1st million 1915

2nd million 1946

3rd million 1964

4th million 1981

5th million 1999

6th million 2015

ends

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