>event-based” Official Documents (birth certificates, divorce decrees and so forth) that prevail in places like America
Almost all other developed countries have comprehensive civil registration system that is not event based (The first country to establish a nationwide population register was Sweden in 1631).
In United States some of these functions are divided between Office of Vital Records in each state and clerk of court of each individual county, but you need official document trail for most things.
As a recent immigrant to Finland the population system there is pretty fascinating. Seeing how many men/women share my forename was pretty cool, for example.
One of the immediate perks was moving house - I updated my address in the population index and suddenly all the companies that bill me and send me mail had new details. No extra effort.
(Of course then I had to update my contact details on domains, and online stores outside Finland, but it was a great timesaver.)
In The Netherlands the civil registry is considered privacy sensitive information and not publicly accessible. You can get an extract of your personal information but you can't access the information of others, not even family or people who are already dead for use in genealogical research. Your records are opened to the public 100 years after death.
Almost all other developed countries have comprehensive civil registration system that is not event based (The first country to establish a nationwide population register was Sweden in 1631).
In United States some of these functions are divided between Office of Vital Records in each state and clerk of court of each individual county, but you need official document trail for most things.
Here is Finnish version and their English frontage: http://vrk.fi/en/frontpage