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

In 2023, there were 316,025 births of new businesses, compared with 309,290 business deaths, meaning there was a net gain of around 6,735 businesses. During the provided time period, 2009, 2010 and 2022 are the only years in which the number of business deaths exceeded the number of births.

Annual data on deaths registered by age, sex and selected underlying cause of death. Tables also provide both mortality rates and numbers of deaths over time.

There were 694,685 live births recorded in the United Kingdom in 2021, compared with 681,560 in the previous year. Between 1887 and 2021 the year with the highest number of live births was 1920 when there were approximately 1.13 million births, while the year with the fewest births was 1977, when there were just 657,038 births. Birth rate at a historic low in 2020 At 10.2 births per 1,000 people, the birth rate of the United Kingdom in 2020 was at a historic low. After witnessing a twenty-first century high of 12.9 in 2010, the birth rate gradually declined before a sharp decrease was recorded between 2012 and 2013. Although there was a slight uptick in the birth rate in 2021, when there were 10.4 births per 1,000 people, the total fertility rate reached a low of 1.53 births per woman in the same year. As well as falling birth and fertility rates, the average age of mothers has been increasing. In 1991, the average age of mothers at childbirth was 27.7 years, compared with 30.9 years in 2021. UK population reaches 67 million In 2022, the overall population of the United Kingdom was almost 67.6 million people. Of the four countries that comprise the UK, England has by far the highest population, at 57.1 million, compared with 5.45 million in Scotland, 3.13 million in Wales, and 1.91 million in Northern Ireland. These countries are far less densely populated than England, especially when compared to London, which had approximately 5,630 people per square kilometer, compared with just 70 in Scotland. After London, North West England was the second-most densely populated area of the UK, which includes the large metropolitan areas of the cities of Manchester, and Liverpool

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.

There were 10,075 deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending June 27, 2025, compared with 10,411 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.

Population figures over a 25-year period, including births, deaths and migration by sex for regions and local authorities in England. 2018-based estimates are the latest principal projection.

Index information relating to every birth, death, marriage and civil partnership registered in England and Wales since 1837 (civil partnerships since 2005).

Annual live births and stillbirths in England and Wales by factors including socio-economic classification, gestational age, birthweight, and ethnicity.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The purpose of the Vital Statistics for England and Wales data is to record the numbers of conceptions, live births, stillbirths, deaths and causes of death for persons in England and Wales, by gender and age. Data are available at local authority, health authority and ward level. Individual studies in the series record various parts of these data. Changes have been made over time to the way in which the Office for National Statistics (ONS) collects vital statistics data, resulting in some variation in the content of later studies in the series. Further information may be found in the Key Population and Vital Statistics reports available from the ONS web site.

During 2006, Sam Smith and colleagues at ESDS Government carried out work on various studies in the series prior to 2002, to improve the data format. The resulting files have been redeposited at the UKDA. More information is available in the documentation for the studies concerned.


The data cover mainly local and health authority level data for 2000: births and deaths summary data, births data, mortality data by cause, infant and perinatal mortality data. Some data at ward level are also included: births and deaths by wards and deaths by selected causes by wards.

For the second edition (2006), work was carried out on parts of the data by ESDS Government to produce more user-friendly tab-delimited ASCII files. For the third edition (October 2008), the files from DVS1 and DVS3 were added to complete the dataset. The data are also available in Excel and ONS ITELite format.


Main Topics:

The following tables are included:

• DVS1H.00: ONS VS1 summary statistics 2000 (health authorities)
• DVS1L.00: ONS VS1 summary statistics 2000 (local authorities)
• DVS2H1.00: ONS VS2 Part 1: mothers 2000 (health authorities)
• DVS2H2.00: ONS VS2 Part 2: maternities 2000 (health authorities)
• DVS2H3.00: ONS VS2 Part 3: birthweight 2000 (health authorities)
• DVS2L1.00: ONS VS2 Part 1: mothers 2000 (local authorities)
• DVS2L2.00 ONS VS2 Part 2: maternities 2000 (local authorities)
• DVS2L3.00: ONS VS2 Part 3: birthweight 2000 (local authorities)
• DVS3H.00: ONS VS3 mortality statistics 2000 (health authorities)
• DVS3L.00: ONS VS3 mortality statistics 2000 (local authorities)
• DVS4DL.00: ONS VS4D deaths, selected causes, wards in local authorities
• DVS4L.00: ONS VS4 births and deaths by wards in local authorities
• DVS5H.00: ONS VS5 infant and perinatal mortality 2000 (health authorities)
• DVS5L.00: ONS VS5 infant and perinatal mortality 2000 (local authorities)

See documentation for further details of definitions, content and methodology.

Copies of the full record of each birth, death, marriage and civil partnership registered in England and Wales since 1837 (civil partnerships since 2005).

In 2022, there were 207,173 live births to mothers aged between 30 and 34 years old in England and Wales, making it the most common age group for live births in that year. Between 1973 and 2000, the most common age for mother giving birth was 25 to 29, and between 1961 and 1972 it was 20 to 24, indicating a gradual trend of mothers giving birth later in life.

Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, by age, sex, region and Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), in the latest weeks for which data are available.