Chennai registered 84,092 births in 2025, the lowest full-year count in the city’s online civil registration records going back to 2019. That is about 16% fewer than the 1,00,177 births registered in 2022 and roughly 22% below the 1,07,852 of 2019. Deaths have held steady at around 67,000 to 69,000 a year, except for the pandemic spike of 2021.
These numbers come from the Civil Registration System (CRS), the legal register every hospital and family feeds when a child is born or a person dies. Here is what the Chennai series shows, how it compares with the state, and the one rule that makes Chennai’s figures look bigger than its own population would suggest.
Chennai’s births and deaths, year by year
The yearly totals below were compiled by the civic data group OpenCity from the Tamil Nadu CRS portal and published as an open dataset last updated in January 2026. The portal records both events reported and events registered; the gap between the two is tiny, usually under 100 a year.
| Year | Births registered | Deaths registered | Births minus deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 1,07,852 | 68,190 | 39,662 |
| 2020 | 95,780 | 73,303 | 22,477 |
| 2021 | 93,564 | 92,290 | 1,274 |
| 2022 | 1,00,177 | 67,880 | 32,297 |
| 2023 | 97,138 | 68,869 | 28,269 |
| 2024 | 91,005 | 67,235 | 23,770 |
| 2025 | 84,092 | 67,546 | 16,546 |
The 2018 row in the same file is left out here because it covers only part of the year. The last column is simple subtraction of the two registered totals, not an official figure.
Two things stand out. First, 2021 was the only year in which deaths came close to births: registered deaths that year were about 35% higher than in 2019, the second COVID wave being the obvious reason. Second, the natural surplus of births over deaths has more than halved since 2019, shrinking from nearly 40,000 to about 16,500.
How Chennai compares with Tamil Nadu
The state’s Statistical Hand Book 2022-23, using figures from the Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, gives district rates for 2022. It recorded 1,00,196 births and 67,883 deaths in Chennai that year, close to the CRS portal count. Against a mid-year population estimate of 90.2 lakh used in that table, Chennai’s birth rate worked out to 11.1 per 1,000 and its death rate to 7.5.
| Area (2022) | Births | Deaths | Birth rate | Death rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chennai | 1,00,196 | 67,883 | 11.1 | 7.5 |
| Chengalpattu | 30,128 | 21,200 | 12.2 | 8.6 |
| Tiruvallur | 19,238 | 18,342 | 8.0 | 7.6 |
| Kancheepuram | 11,448 | 10,053 | 12.3 | 10.8 |
| Tamil Nadu | 9,36,837 | 6,96,402 | 12.2 | 9.1 |
Rates are per 1,000 people. Chennai alone accounted for a little over a tenth of all births registered in the state in 2022.
Why Chennai’s count includes the suburbs
The Registrar General’s CRS report for 2022 states the rule plainly: births and deaths are registered only at the place where they occur. A mother from Avadi or Guduvanchery who delivers at a hospital in Egmore, Royapettah or Anna Nagar is counted as a Chennai birth. The same applies to patients from across the state who die in the city’s large government and private hospitals.
That is why Chennai’s raw totals are high relative to its resident population, and why the neighbouring districts can look low. Tiruvallur’s 2022 birth rate of 8.0 per 1,000, for example, partly reflects families crossing into Chennai to deliver. Treat district birth and death rates from CRS as a measure of where events happened, not where people live.
Nearly every Chennai birth now takes place in a hospital. The NFHS-5 district fact sheet (2019-21) recorded institutional births at 100% and birth registration for children under five at 98.2%.
What is behind the fall in births
The CRS data record events; they do not explain them. Still, the decline fits the long fall in fertility across Tamil Nadu. The NFHS-5 state fact sheet put the state’s total fertility rate at 1.6 children per woman in 2019-21, down from 1.7 in 2015-16 and well below the replacement level of about 2.1. Chennai’s own NFHS-5 sheet shows the share of the population under 15 falling from 22.2% to 18.0% between the two surveys.
Any explanation beyond that, such as later marriage, smaller families or more deliveries shifting to suburban hospitals, would need data the registers do not hold.
Where to get your own records
The statistics above are built from individual certificates. Births and deaths in Chennai must be reported within 21 days, and the 2022 CRS report places Tamil Nadu among the states registering more than 90% of births within that window. Certificates for events in the Greater Chennai Corporation area are issued through the Corporation’s birth and death registration service, and older state records can be searched on the Tamil Nadu CRS portal.
Quick answers
How many babies were born in Chennai in 2025?
84,092 births were registered, according to the CRS-based series published by OpenCity.
Are Chennai births falling?
Yes. Registered births fell every year from 2022 to 2025, from 1,00,177 to 84,092.
Why are Chennai’s death figures so high in 2021?
Registered deaths reached 92,290, about 35% above 2019, during the year of the second COVID wave.
Do these figures count only Chennai residents?
No. CRS registers events where they happen, so births and deaths in Chennai hospitals of people from other districts are counted in Chennai.
Information checked against official sources on 18 October 2026. Fees, dates and rules can change; confirm on the linked official pages before acting.
Sources
- Chennai: Annual Births and Deaths 2018-2025, compiled from the Tamil Nadu CRS portal (OpenCity)
- Statistical Hand Book of Tamil Nadu 2022-23, Chapter 2: Vital Statistics (Department of Economics and Statistics, Government of Tamil Nadu)
- Vital Statistics of India based on the Civil Registration System 2022 (Office of the Registrar General, India)
- Compendium of NFHS-5 (2019-21) State and District Fact Sheets, Tamil Nadu (IIPS and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, via OpenCity)
