Every month, on or around the 15th, I look forward to going on Hong Kong’s Census and Statistics Department's website because they release monthly updates on the city's births, deaths, and marriages in an online publication called the Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics. In July, however, I didn't get a notification about its release, and after going to their website, a shocking revelation:

I guess this makes sense; the Monthly Digest of Statistics began in 1970 when the Web did not exist. Back then, printed copies of the Monthly Digest which were available on sale at the Government Publications Centre and the Census and Statistics Department. The inaugural issue, published in March 1970, cost HK$3. By the handover in July 1997 the price had risen to HK$34, and it continued to increase over the years. The December 2011 Digest, which was the final printed issue, sold for HK$248. In January 2012, the publication became online-only, downloadable for free.

Now that their data is instantly accessible to everyone from anywhere, and charts and graphs can be displayed on the Web, a monthly publication seems no longer necessary. The C&SD's online collection of government statistics is fairly comprehensive, and as mentioned in the Abstract, updates to the data are available through separate statistical tables on their website or other government websites.

Well, nearly all of them.

If you check the Summary of data sources, this is where on its website you can find the data on births, deaths, and marriages:

Footnote (1): For further inquiries regarding this information, please contact the department directly: Immigration Department.

What?!? Now that's a bummer.

As you're probably aware, economies across Asia are facing a demographic crisis. In Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and China, birth rates are plummeting at a rapid pace, as their governments devise incentives to encourage women to have more children. In Hong Kong, it is no different.
Here's the data for annual registered births, looking ALL the way back to 1936:

(A comment about Offprint, the website hosting this blog: Captions and ALT text are in development, according to the creator. ALT text: A chart of Hong Kong's annual registered births from 1936 to 2025.)

As you can see, the decline in births started in the 1960s; after the influx of mainlanders following the Second World War, Hong Kong transitioned into an urban, industrial society, resulting in women joining the workforce and smaller public housing. The large uptick in births starting in the mid-2000s was a result of birth tourism as mainlanders went to Hong Kong nine months pregnant so their babies could obtain Hong Kong IDs. In 2013, then-Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying banned mainland birth tourism, and unsurprisingly birth rates began to fall again.

Now here is a look at monthly data since 2009, whose data comes from the Monthly Digest:

(ALT text: Chart of Hong Kong monthly registered births, 2009-present)
The large swings during the Covid-19 pandemic are self-explanatory.

As of April, there was an outside shot that registered births in Hong Kong in 2026 would fall below 30,000 for the first time since 1945. But as of today, I won’t be able to provide monthly updates on the likelihood of that happening.

Without monthly data on registered births and marriages, it will also be more difficult to determine whether future incentives to increase birth rates are effective. The current baby bonus scheme that awards HK$20,000 to families for any child born on or after October 25, 2023 has confirmed what demographers already know: one-off cash incentives have little effect.

(ALT text: Hong Kong registered births, before and 40 weeks after the Baby Bonus scheme was implemented.)

When the government announced the baby bonus scheme on October 25, 2023, it took effect immediately, so if by sheer coincidence you were expecting a child the next day, JACKPOT!!— an extra HK$20,000 in your pocket. That's why it makes sense to examine the period 40 weeks after the scheme was announced to see what effect there would be on the number of births.

So what happens to the registered-birth updates now that they are no longer monthly? Annual registered births are updated on Hong Kong’s Open Data website, so at least we still have those. Hong Kong also updates its population data twice a year in February and August, which include numbers for births and deaths. Perhaps C&SD will release an annual feature on monthly births, deaths, and marriages. Perhaps academics and the media will pressure the Immigration Department to publicly release timely monthly figures. But for now, this means fewer updates on demographic data that should be of the utmost importance to the government.