Registered leading causes of death by age, sex and country, UK, 2001 to 2018

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.

Annual age-standardised and age-specific mortality rates by leading causes of death for England and Wales, 2001 to 2018 (Experimental Statistics)

In 2023 life expectancy for both males and females at birth rose when compared to 2022. Male life expectancy increased from 78.58 years to 78.82 years, and from 82.57 years to 82.77 years for females. Throughout most of this period, there is a steady rise in life expectancy for both males and females, with improvements in life expectancy beginning to slow in the 2010s and then starting to decline in the 2020s. Life expectancy since the 18th Century Although there has been a recent dip in life expectancy in the UK, long-term improvements to life expectancy stretch back several centuries. In 1765, life expectancy was below 39 years, and only surpassed 40 years in the 1810s, 50 years by the 1910s, 60 years by the 1930s and 70 by the 1960s. While life expectancy has broadly improved since the 1700s, this trajectory was interrupted at various points due to wars and diseases. In the early 1920s, for example, life expectancy suffered a noticeable setback in the aftermath of the First World War and Spanish Flu Epidemic. Impact of COVID-19 While improvements to UK life expectancy stalled during the 2010s, it wasn't until the 2020s that it began to decline. The impact of COVID-19 was one of the primary factors in this respect, with 2020 seeing the most deaths in the UK since 1918. The first wave of the pandemic in Spring of that year was a particularly deadly time, with weekly death figures far higher than usual. A second wave that winter saw a peak of almost 5,700 excess deaths a week in late January 2021, with excess deaths remaining elevated for several years afterward.

Years of life lost due to mortality from all causes (ICD-10 A00-Y99). Years of life lost (YLL) is a measure of premature mortality. Its primary purpose is to compare the relative importance of different causes of premature death within a particular population and it can therefore be used by health planners to define priorities for the prevention of such deaths. It can also be used to compare the premature mortality experience of different populations for a particular cause of death. The concept of years of life lost is to estimate the length of time a person would have lived had they not died prematurely. By inherently including the age at which the death occurs, rather than just the fact of its occurrence, the calculation is an attempt to better quantify the burden, or impact, on society from the specified cause of mortality. Legacy unique identifier: P00332

Annual data on death registrations by single year of age for the UK (1974 onwards) and England and Wales (1963 onwards).

Leading causes of death by age group and sex

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: Official Statistics not designated as National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Mortality

Between 1953 and 2021, the death rate of the United Kingdom fluctuated between a high of 12.2 deaths per 1,000 people in 1962 and a low of 8.7 in 2011. From 2011 onwards, the death rate creeped up slightly and, in 2020, reached 10.3 deaths per 1,000 people. In 2021, the most recent year provided here, the death rate was ten, a decline from 2020 but still higher than in almost every year in the twenty-first century. The recent spike in the death rate corresponds to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, with the first cases recorded in early 2020. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were around 689,600 deaths in the United Kingdom, the highest in more than a century. Although there were fewer deaths in 2021, at almost 667,500, this was still far higher than in recent years. When looking at the weekly deaths in England and Wales for this time period, two periods stand out for reporting far more deaths than usual. The first period was between weeks 13 and 22 of 2020, which saw two weeks in late April report more than 20,000 deaths. Excess deaths for the week ending April 17, 2020, were 11,854 and 11,539 for the following week. Another wave of deaths occurred in January 2021, when there were more than 18,000 deaths per week between weeks three and five of that year. Improvements to life expectancy slowing Between 2020 and 2022, life expectancy in the United Kingdom was approximately 82.57 years for women and 78.57 years for men. Compared with life expectancy in 1980/82, this marked an increase of around six years for women and almost eight years for men. Despite these long-term developments, improvements to life expectancy have been slowing in recent years and have even declined since 2017/19. As of 2023, the country with the highest life expectancy in the World was Switzerland at 84.2 years, followed by Japan at 84.1 years, and then by Spain at 84 years.

Hospital admissions for serious accidental injury, with a length of stay exceeding 3 days (ICD-10 primary diagnosis in the range S00 through T98X and external cause code in the following ranges: V01-V99, W00-X59, Y40-Y84), standardised for the age and sex characteristics of the population and expressed as a rate per 100,000 population. The primary diagnosis field in Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) records information about the patient’s disease or condition and the codes are defined in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death (ICD-10). Where applicable, the external cause field in HES records the environmental events and circumstances as the cause of injury, poisoning and other adverse effects. Comparison of crude episode rates between areas which may have different age structures would be inappropriate, because the age structure of the population can affect the number of episodes and thereby the crude episode rate. To overcome this problem, the common approach is to adjust or standardise the episode rates to take account of differences between the age structure of the populations. The directly age standardised episode rate is the rate of episodes that would occur in a standard population (in this case the European Standard Population) if that population were to experience the age-specific rates of the subject population (in this case individual local authority populations). The same standard population is used for males, females and persons. This means that rates can be compared across genders but also that rates for persons are standardised for age only and not for sex. This indicator relates to the Our Healthier Nation strategy target to reduce serious accidental injury. The target is monitored by the directly age-standardised episode rate for accidents for persons of all ages. The target is a 10% reduction by the year 2010 from the baseline rate in 1995/96. The strategy particularly identified that accidents are the greatest single threat to life for children and young people, and children up to the age of 15 years from unskilled families are five times more likely to die from accidental injury than those from professional families and falls are a major cause of death and disability for older people (3,000 people aged 65 and over die each year). Accidental injury is a leading cause of death and disability – the World Health Organization suggests that by 2020 injury will account for the largest single reason for loss of healthy human life-years. In the UK non-fatal injury results in 720,000 people being admitted to hospital a year and more than six million visits to accident and emergency departments. It is estimated that in the UK disability from injury is responsible for a considerably greater burden of potential healthy life-years lost than from cancer, or heart disease and stroke. This indicator has been discontinued and so there will be no further updates. Legacy unique identifier: P01059

Annual data on death registrations by area of usual residence in the UK. Summary tables including age-standardised mortality rates.

Suicide among children and young people (CYP) is a leading cause of death. In the UK children identified as suicidal are referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for assessment and treatment. However, the number of children referred for suicidality, and their care journey is unknown. This retrospective cohort study conducted in two distinct CAMHS teams, in Scotland, UK, aimed to quantify the numbers of children referred for suicidality, describing this population and the outcomes of these referrals. All CAMHS referrals (n = 1159) over a 6-month period (Jan-June 2019) were screened to identify those referred primarily for suicidality. Data extracted included: age, gender, source of referral, reason for referral including underlying issues, whether offered an assessment, and referral outcome. Area based deprivation scores were attached to each referral. Associations between the referred CYP's characteristics (including source of referral and underlying issues) and referral outcomes were explored using Chi Square, Fishers Exact test, and one-way ANOVA. Referrals for 284 children were identified as being for suicidality across the two sites (Site A n = 104; Site B n = 180). These represented 25% of all referrals to these CAMHS over a six-month period. One third of these concerned children under 12. The underlying issues, referrals sources, and demographic indicators were similar in both sites. In site A 31% were offered an assessment, whilst in Site B which had a dedicated team for suicidal CYP, 82% were offered an assessment. Similarly, more children in Site B were offered treatment (47.8%), than Site A (7.7%). Referrals from A&E were prioritized in both areas, and those who had attempted suicide offered an assessment more often. Older children were more likely to be offered treatment, although they were more likely to present with a history of self-harming behavior and/or previous suicide attempt. There are high numbers of children being referred to CAMHS for suicidality, and many are young children (

There were 11,480 deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending November 14, 2025, compared with 11,297 in the previous week. During this time period, the two weeks with the highest number of weekly deaths were in April 2020, with the week ending April 17, 2020, having 22,351 deaths, and the following week 21,997 deaths, a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Death and life expectancy As of 2022, the life expectancy for women in the UK was just over 82.5 years, and almost 78.6 years for men. Compared with 1765, when average life expectancy was under 39 years, this is a huge improvement in historical terms. Even in the more recent past, life expectancy was less than 47 years at the start of the 20th Century, and was under 70 as recently as the 1950s. Despite these significant developments in the long-term, improvements in life expectancy stalled between 2009/11 and 2015/17, and have even gone into decline since 2020. Between 2020 and 2022, for example, life expectancy at birth fell by 23 weeks for females, and 37 weeks for males. COVID-19 in the UK The first cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom were recorded on January 31, 2020, but it was not until a month later that cases began to rise exponentially. By March 5 of this year there were more than 100 cases, rising to 1,000 days later and passing 10,000 cumulative cases by March 26. At the height of the pandemic in late April and early May, there were around six thousand new cases being recorded daily. As of January 2023, there were more than 24.2 million confirmed cumulative cases of COVID-19 recorded in the United Kingdom, resulting in 202,156 deaths.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This study comprises a complete transcription of all the district-level tables which are the main contents of each of the Registrar-General for England and Wales Decennial Supplements from 1851-60 to 1901-10; these are supplements to the 25th, 35th, 45th, 55th, 65th and 75th Annual Reports.

The reports for 1851-1900 were computerised by a project led by Professor Robert Woods of Liverpool University, creating a large set of spreadsheets, one for each district in each decade. These were assembled into a single large file by the Great Britain Historical GIS, working in collaboration with Hamish James of the UK Data Archive. The GBHGIS team computerised the 1901-10 report, checked all data against the original reports, and added identifiers linking the districts to the digital boundary data they had created.

For each district in each decade, the reports cross-tabulate causes of death against age. In some decades, there are separate tables for each district for males and females, and the causes of death vary between decades. There were c. 630 districts, the exact number varying by decade.

Decennial cause of death data for Registration Districts in England and Wales cross-classified by age and sometimes by sex. The study also includes a separate table, mainly derived, containing age- and gender-specific counts of deaths, without cause information and organised to simplify calculation of standardised mortality rates.

In 2023, the age-specific death rate for men aged 90 or over in England and Wales was 248.1 per one thousand population, and 215.1 for women. Except for infants that were under the age of one, younger age groups had the lowest death rate, with the death rate getting progressively higher in older age groups.

This dataset presents the under-75 mortality rate from all cardiovascular diseases in England. It captures the rate of deaths attributed to circulatory diseases (ICD-10 codes I00–I99) among individuals aged under 75, using directly age-standardised rates per 100,000 population. The data is aggregated into quinary age bands and is available for both single years and three-year rolling averages, providing a comprehensive view of premature cardiovascular mortality trends.

Rationale Cardiovascular diseases remain a leading cause of premature mortality in England. Monitoring under-75 mortality rates helps identify health inequalities, assess the effectiveness of public health interventions, and guide resource allocation. This indicator supports efforts to reduce preventable deaths and improve cardiovascular health outcomes.

Numerator The numerator is the number of deaths from all circulatory diseases (ICD-10 codes I00 to I99) registered in the respective calendar years, among individuals aged under 75. These figures are aggregated into quinary age bands (e.g., 0–4, 5–9, ..., 70–74) and sourced from the national Death Register.

Denominator The denominator is the population of individuals aged under 75, also aggregated into quinary age bands. For single-year rates, the population estimate for that year is used. For three-year rolling averages, the denominator is the sum of the populations over the three years. Population data is sourced from the 2021 Census.

Caveats Data may not align exactly with published Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures due to differences in postcode lookup versions and the application of comparability ratios in the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) data. Users should consider these factors when comparing with other sources.

External references Further information and related indicators can be found on the OHID Fingertips platform.

Click here to explore more from the Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Partnerships Outcome Framework.