The child mortality rate in the United Kingdom, for children under the age of five, was 329 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that approximately one in every three children born in 1800 did not make it to their fifth birthday. Over the course of the next 220 years, this number has dropped drastically, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, and the rate has dropped to its lowest point ever in 2020 where it is just four deaths per thousand births.

In 2021, the infant mortality rate in the United Kingdom was four deaths one year per 1,000 live births, one of the lowest infant mortality rate in this period. Infant mortality has fallen considerably since 1900, when there were 150 infant deaths per 1,000 live births.

Historical dataset showing U.K. infant mortality rate by year from 1950 to 2025.

Actual value and historical data chart for United Kingdom Mortality Rate Infant Female Per 1000 Live Births

Number of infant deaths in United Kingdom was reported at 2719 deaths in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United Kingdom - Number of infant deaths - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on November of 2025.

For most of the world, throughout most of human history, the average life expectancy from birth was around 24. This figure fluctuated greatly depending on the time or region, and was higher than 24 in most individual years, but factors such as pandemics, famines, and conflicts caused regular spikes in mortality and reduced life expectancy. Child mortality The most significant difference between historical mortality rates and modern figures is that child and infant mortality was so high in pre-industrial times; before the introduction of vaccination, water treatment, and other medical knowledge or technologies, women would have around seven children throughout their lifetime, but around half of these would not make it to adulthood. Accurate, historical figures for infant mortality are difficult to ascertain, as it was so prevalent, it took place in the home, and was rarely recorded in censuses; however, figures from this source suggest that the rate was around 300 deaths per 1,000 live births in some years, meaning that almost one in three infants did not make it to their first birthday in certain periods. For those who survived to adolescence, they could expect to live into their forties or fifties on average. Modern figures It was not until the eradication of plague and improvements in housing and infrastructure in recent centuries where life expectancy began to rise in some parts of Europe, before industrialization and medical advances led to the onset of the demographic transition across the world. Today, global life expectancy from birth is roughly three times higher than in pre-industrial times, at almost 73 years. It is higher still in more demographically and economically developed countries; life expectancy is over 82 years in the three European countries shown, and over 84 in Japan. For the least developed countries, mostly found in Sub-Saharan Africa, life expectancy from birth can be as low as 53 years.

Historical annual data on unexpected deaths (certified by a coroner) and infant deaths by selected causes in England and Wales for the period 2004 to 2013.

Historical dataset showing U.K. birth rate by year from 1950 to 2025.

In 2021 the live birth rate of the United Kingdom fell to 10.4 births per 1,000 population, the lowest it had been during this time period. The UK's birth rate has been declining steadily since 2010 when the birth rate was 12.9 births per 1,000 population. After 1938, the year with the highest birth rate in the UK was 1947, when the crude birth rate was 21.2 births per 1,000 population. Under two children per mother in 2021 The most recent crude live birth rate for this statistic is based on the 694,685 births, that occurred in 2021 as well as the mid-year population estimate of 67 million for the United Kingdom. It has a close relation to the fertility rate which estimates the average number of children women are expected to have in their lifetime, which was 1.53 in this reporting year. Among the constituent countries of the UK, Northern Ireland had the highest birth rate at 11.6, followed by England at 10.5, Wales at 9.3, and Scotland at 8.7. International comparisons The UK is not alone in seeing its birth and fertility rates decline dramatically in recent decades. Across the globe, fertility rates have fallen noticeably since the 1960s, with the fertility rate for Asia, Europe, and the Americas being below two in 2021. As of this year, the global fertility rate was 2.31, and was by far the highest in Africa, which had a fertility rate of 4.12, although this too has fallen from a high of 6.72 in the late 1960s. A reduction in infant mortality, as well as better access to contraception, are factors that have typically influenced declining fertility rates recently.

This study aimed to provide a more individual, micro-level appreciation of infant mortality data. Previously, the focus of these data had been aggregative, at a fairly high level of aggregation - the country, county registration district. To that end, a team of research students at the Open University has examined vaccination registers at the sub-registration district level for 22 such districts.
In 1853 vaccination was made compulsory and in 1871 legislation was introduced requiring all poor law unions to appoint vaccination officers and to set up a system of registration; this system, with only minor alterations, lasted until 1948. Under the 1871 Act, vaccination officers took over all the functions of the local registrars except for giving parents the statutory notice of compulsory vaccination. The vaccination registrar recorded the following: (i) the registration number in the civil birth register; (ii) date of birth; (iii) place of birth; (iv) name of child; (v) sex; (vi) name of father, or if illegitimate, mother; (vii) occupation of father or if illegitimate, mother; (viii) date of notice to vaccinate given to parent; (ix) date of successful vaccination, postponement or insusceptibility to vaccination; (x) name of medical man who signed the certificate; (xi) date of death of any child who died before vaccination; (xii) reference number in vaccination officer's report book on problem cases. From the monthly information on infant deaths, the vaccination officer compiled an infant death register on children dying under the age of one year.
Medical historians have begun to recognise the historical importance of the compulsory provisions of Victorian vaccination legislation, which entailed the growth of a complex administrative structure necessary for its implementation. This can been seen as a forerunner of the Welfare State, particularly as regards the development of the public health movement.
It is generally agreed that civil registration had reached a high standard of reliability by 1872, and as the vaccination birth registers and infant death registers are copies of the civil registers for the period 1872-1948, they constitute an unrivalled source of information on infant mortality for the period.

Annual UK and constituent country figures for births, deaths, marriages, divorces, civil partnerships and civil partnership dissolutions.

This data was originally published in the reports of the Registrar-General for England and Wales. It was computerised by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project and its collaborators. It forms part of the Great Britain Historical Database, which contains a wide range of geographically-located statistics, selected to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain, generally at sub-county scales.

In this period, 1911 to 1973, the main reporting units were over 1,500 local government districts, as compared to c. 600 Registration Districts pre-1911. As a result, most tabulations provide data only for the larger urban units, plus aggregates covering all Rural Districts and all other urban units in each county. This study centers on the main exception to this, an annual table providing counts of all births, all deaths and all infant deaths in all districts, appearing in the Registrar-General's Annual Reports from 1911 to 1920, then in the RG's Statistical Reviews from 1921 to 1973. Later reports include additional variables. This study also includes more limited transcriptions of causes of death and age-specific mortality.

This file contains the infant death categorisations associated with the ICD10h (Historic cause of death coding and classification scheme for individual-level causes of death). ICD10h has been designed by the authors to aid the coding and classification of causes of death recorded on historic individual death records and associated files include a manual, the list of codes, descriptions and values of a general categorisation, and exemplar list of historic strings together with the ICD10h codes. The ICD10h system is based on the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases - 2016 version (ICD10 - 2016), and combines ICD10 codes (without modification) with new codes for archaic/historic terms.

The data was derived from the following projects/deposited data: Determining the Demography of Victorian Scotland Through Record Linkage, ESRC RES-000-23-0128 held at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge; P. Gunn and R. Kippen, ‘Household and Family Formation in Nineteenth-Century Tasmania, Dataset of 195 Thousand Births, 93 Thousand Deaths and 51 Thousand Marriages Registered in Tasmania, 1838-1899’, 2008.

The resource creation was supported by the following projects: Digitising Scotland/Scottish Health Informatics Project (funded by the ESRC); Studying Health in Port Cities (funded by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research); The Great Leap (funded by COST-Action CA22116).

SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION

This resource is available under a CC BY licence.

Recommended citation for this dataset: Alice Reid, Eilidh Garrett, Maria Hiltunen Maltesdotter, Angelique Janssens, 2024, ICD10h: Historic cause of death coding and classification scheme for individual-level causes of death – Infant Categorisations [https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109963]

Please see the associated resources: Historic cause of death coding and classification scheme for individual-level causes of death – manual [https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109960] Historic cause of death coding and classification scheme for individual-level causes of death – Codes [https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109961] Historic cause of death coding and classification scheme for individual-level causes of death – English language historic strings [https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109962]

ICD10h is a research tool created to facilitate the study of historical cause of death records and should not be used for any official purpose. It is based on the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) version 2016 (Geneva: World Health Organization 2016) but is not a recognised version or extension of ICD-10 and is not authorised by WHO. However we have consulted with WHO: they recognise that ICD10h is a useful academic methodology and have not raised any objections to its creation. Data coded using ICD10h are not directly comparable with data coded in ICD-10, and the underlying or primary cause of death derived using the ICD10h methodology may be different from the underlying cause derived in ICD-10 according to the WHO rules. Please note that ICD-10 version 2016 is not the most recent version of ICD-10; and that WHO now recommend the use of ICD-11; a more advanced and detailed classification.

DATA & FILE OVERVIEW

ICD10h_InfantCat.xlsx Excel file consisting of 2 worksheets: 1) ReadMe sheet 2) InfantCat

Separate csv file for 2) containing the same information.

This file builds on a previous, unpublished version of ICD10h (dating from 2020). InfantCat2024 provides an updated version of the previous categorisation (InfantCat2020). Please see the Manual for detail of the changes.

METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION

The data were hand-coded and subject to stringent algorithm-assisted tests.

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: InfantCat

Number of variables: 4

Number of cases/rows: 14088

Variable List: IDMasterlist (unique ID number, same as Masterlist table) ICD10h (ICD10h code ) Infantcat2024 (Infantcat2024 category) Infantcat2020 (Infantcat2020 category)

Time series data for the statistic Birth_Rate_Crude_Per_1000_People and country United Kingdom. Indicator Definition:Crude birth rate indicates the number of live births occurring during the year, per 1,000 population estimated at midyear. Subtracting the crude death rate from the crude birth rate provides the rate of natural increase, which is equal to the rate of population change in the absence of migration.The statistic "Birth Rate Crude Per 1000 People" stands at 10.02 per mille as of 12/31/2023, the lowest value at least since 12/31/1961, the period currently displayed. Regarding the One-Year-Change of the series, the current value constitutes a decrease of -0.077 percentage points compared to the value the year prior.The 1 year change in percentage points is -0.077.The 3 year change in percentage points is -0.181.The 5 year change in percentage points is -0.977.The 10 year change in percentage points is -2.08.The Serie's long term average value is 13.38 per mille. It's latest available value, on 12/31/2023, is 3.36 percentage points lower, compared to it's long term average value.The Serie's change in percentage points from it's minimum value, on 12/31/2023, to it's latest available value, on 12/31/2023, is +0.0.The Serie's change in percentage points from it's maximum value, on 12/31/1964, to it's latest available value, on 12/31/2023, is -8.78.

This table contains 30 series, with data for years 1871 - 1971 (not all combinations necessarily have data for all years), and was last released on 2012-02-16. This table contains data described by the following dimensions (Not all combinations are available): Geography (1 items: Canada ...) Birthplace (30 items: Total all countries; England and Wales; Northern Ireland; Scotland ...).

Actual value and historical data chart for United Kingdom Birth Rate Crude Per 1 000 People

This dataset is about countries per year in the United Kingdom. It has 64 rows. It features 4 columns: country, birth rate, and median age.

Annual historical data for UK residents by broad country of birth and citizenship groups, broken down by UK country, local authority, unitary authority, metropolitan and London boroughs, and counties.

Between April 2021 and December 2024, the Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study tested the feasibility of sampling and recruitment for a new UK-wide birth cohort study. We will publish our findings here soon. In the meantime, we are delighted that the Economic and Social Research Council have agreed to fund a main study and have invited us to apply for the funding as a sole applicant. We look forward to submitting our proposal.The Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study collected data on a new generation of UK-born babies in their first year of life. It captured information about their economic and social environments, and their health, wellbeing and development.The main aim of the project is to test the feasibility of sampling and recruitment for an innovative new UK-wide birth cohort study. However, the data from the feasibility study itself will also be made available to the research and policy community.The Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study aims to paint a nationally representative picture of the circumstances and lives of a new cohort of babies born at a critical time in the UK’s history.With the economic and social repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the impacts of Brexit on our economy and society still unknown, the need to understand the challenges facing this generation of babies, their development as children and their future prospects is pressing.The primary scientific aim of the study is to understand how inequalities in early child development are changing over time, and to learn whether the social and biological factors driving these trajectories are evolving.The key scientific themes include:The Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study draws a nationally representative sample of babies born in a two-month period from all four UK nations. In England, Wales and Scotland the babies were born in November and December 2022, and in Northern Ireland the babies were born in June and July 2023. Interviews took place when the babies were around 9-12 months old.In England, Wales and Scotland, families were first contacted in July 2023 and fieldwork finished by the end of June 2024. In Northern Ireland, families were first contacted in February 2024 and fieldwork finished in September 2024.In total, 1,918 families took part:1,850 mums and 1,256 dads took part.The data will be available from the UK Data Service in 2025.Data collection involved interviews with mothers and fathers. Saliva samples from parents and infants for DNA extraction were collected from an experimental sub-group to test the impact on participation.The feasibility of innovative measures to capture babies’ development was also tested. These comprise neuro scientific measures (looking-time task, eye tracking, mobile EEG to measure brain activity, together with use of an actimetry device), and measurement of the early language environment (through placement in the home of a LENA recording device).We also tested additional infant biosamples (hair samples) and infant anthropometry (weight, length, head circumference and adiposity). The feasibility of collecting these specialist objective measurements using trained fieldwork agency staff was assessed via small scale field tests, separate to the main data collection.The study design will enable linkage to electronic and other administrative records of babies and parents as well as to geo-environmental data, which can provide information on environmental and other conditions in the places they spend time, including homes, childcare locations, and hospitals.Parents were asked about their baby’s health and growth, behaviour and development, sleep, diet and activities they do with their child. They were also asked about their home and family, including other children and their partner/other parent, their work situation and family finances, health and wellbeing, parenting approach and relationship with their baby, relationship support and services received, and childcare arrangements.Both mothers and fathers were invited to interview, including those who live apart from their child’s other parent. Each parent was interviewed separately.One parent was asked to complete a 60-minute interview in person with an interviewer. This longer interview was recommended for the parent who spends the most time with the baby. In most families, this was the child’s mother. There were options to complete the interview by telephone and by video call if an in-person interview was not possible.The other parent living with the baby, usually the child’s father, was asked to complete a 30-minute interview, either in-person with an interviewer or online. This interview was shorter because some questions only need to be asked once per baby or per household.

Life expectancy at birth, female (years) in United Kingdom was reported at 83.21 years in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United Kingdom - Life expectancy at birth, female (years) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on November of 2025.