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

In 2018 there were over 40 thousand deaths caused by ischaemic heart diseases in the United Kingdom, making it the leading cause of death in that year. Since 2001 there has been a noticeable increase in the number of people dying from dementia or alzheimers, which caused 26.5 thousand deaths in 2018, an increase of almost ten thousand when compared with 2012.

Mortality from leading causes of death by ethnic group, England and Wales, 2012 to 2019.

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) has updated the mortality profile.

The profile brings together a selection of mortality indicators, including from other OHID data tools such as the https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/public-health-outcomes-framework/data">Public Health Outcomes Framework, making it easier to assess outcomes across a range of causes of death.

For the January 2022 update, 2 new indicators have been added to the profile:

• mortality rate for deaths involving COVID-19, all ages
• mortality rate for deaths involving COVID-19, under 75s

COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in England in 2020, but the pandemic had a much greater impact on mortality in some areas than others. These indicators have been included alongside other indicators for leading causes of death in the mortality profile to provide a more complete picture of mortality for local areas in 2020.

If you would like to send us feedback on the tool please contact profilefeedback@phe.gov.uk.

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

In 1948, over a quarter of deaths recorded in England and Wales were caused by heart disease. The National Health Service was founded in this year in the UK and aimed at improving the health of British citizens.

Cause of death, by non-communicable diseases (% of total) in United Kingdom was reported at 88.16 % in 2019, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United Kingdom - Cause of death, by non-communicable diseases (% of total) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on April of 2026.

There were 11,559 deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending February 27, 2026, compared with 11,907 for the corresponding week in 2025. 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 2024, the life expectancy for women in the UK was just over 83 years, and around 79 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 even declined in the early 2020s. 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.

The dataset was originally created to allow the construction of age-specific mortality series and cohort mortality series for particular diseases, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present (in conjunction with the comparable mortality database created by the Office of National Statistics which covers 1901 – present). The dataset is fairly comprehensive and therefore allows both fine analysis of trends in single causes and also the construction of consistent aggregated categories of causes over time. Additionally, comparison of trends in individual causes can be used to infer transfers of deaths between categories over time, that may cause artifactual changes in mortality rates of particular causes. The data are presented by sex, allowing calculation of sex ratios. The age-specific and annual nature of the dataset allows the analysis of cause-specific mortality by birth cohort (assuming low migration at the national level). The database can be used in conjunction with the ONS database “Historic Mortality and Population Data, 1901-1992”, already in the UK Data Archive collection as SN 2902, to create continuous cause-of-death series for the period 1848-1992 (or later, if using more recent versions of the ONS database).


Main Topics:

The dataset contains annual cause-specific mortality data for England and Wales for the years 1848-1900, transcribed from the Annual Reports of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England and Wales. Deaths are enumerated by sex and age (single year age groups for ages 0-4, five year age groups for ages 5-24 for most years, ten year age groups for ages 25 to 84 or 94 with last open interval 85+ or 95+, depending on year). Causes are described as they appeared in the Annual Reports (with some slight alterations to maintain consistency of spelling) and a classification system is provided (as a series of additional variables) that accords with the original schemes in the Annual Reports. The nosological categories used in the Annual Reports changed several times over the period, and there has been no attempt in the electronic database to create consistent categories spanning the period. Users will need to do this themselves, but the documentation provides a guide to the major nosological changes.

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

In 2023, the life expectancy at birth for women born in the UK was 82.77 years, compared with 78.82 years for men. By age 65 men had a life expectancy of 18.51 years, compared with 20.96 years for women.

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.

Provisional data on death registrations and death occurrences in England and Wales, broken down by sex and age. Includes deaths due to coronavirus (COVID-19) and leading causes of death.

In December 2025, there were 49,918 deaths in England and Wales, compared with 48,293 in the previous December. In April 2020, there were 88,038 deaths, which was an increase of almost 40,000 from the month before and by far the month with the most deaths in this period. The dramatic increase in deaths in April can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which first hit the UK in early 2020.

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.

Main Topics:

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.

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

Notes:

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.