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

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

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

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

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.

There were 11,607 deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending February 21, 2025, compared with 12,365 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 in decline since 2020. Between 2020 and 2022, for example, life expectancy at birth fell by 23 weeks for females, and 37 weeks for males.2. 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.

For the week ending March 7, 2025, weekly deaths in England and Wales were 124 below the number expected, compared with 460 fewer than expected in the previous week. In late 2022, and through early 2023, excess deaths were elevated for a number of weeks, with the excess deaths figure for the week ending January 13, 2023, the highest since February 2021. In the middle of April 2020, at the height of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, there were almost 12,000 excess deaths a week recorded in England and Wales. It was not until two months later, in the week ending June 19, 2020, that the number of deaths began to be lower than the five-year average for the corresponding week. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were 689,629 deaths in the United Kingdom, making that year the deadliest since 1918, at the height of the Spanish influenza pandemic. As seen in the excess death figures, April 2020 was by far the worst month in terms of deaths during the pandemic. The weekly number of deaths for weeks 16 and 17 of that year were 22,351, and 21,997 respectively. Although the number of deaths fell to more usual levels for the rest of that year, a winter wave of the disease led to a high number of deaths in January 2021, with 18,676 deaths recorded in the fourth week of that year. For the whole of 2021, there were 667,479 deaths in the UK, 22,150 fewer than in 2020. Life expectancy in the UK goes into reverse In 2022, life expectancy at birth for women in the UK was 82.6 years, while for men it was 78.6 years. This was the lowest life expectancy in the country for ten years, and came after life expectancy improvements stalled throughout the 2010s, and then declined from 2020 onwards. There is also quite a significant regional difference in life expectancy in the UK. In the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, for example, the life expectancy for men was 81.5 years, and 86.5 years for women. By contrast, in Blackpool, in North West England, male life expectancy was just 73.1 years, while for women life expectancy was lowest in Glasgow, at 78 years.

This publication of the SHMI relates to discharges in the reporting period March 2023 - February 2024. The SHMI is the ratio between the actual number of patients who die following hospitalisation at the trust and the number that would be expected to die on the basis of average England figures, given the characteristics of the patients treated there. The SHMI covers patients admitted to hospitals in England who died either while in hospital or within 30 days of being discharged. To help users of the data understand the SHMI, trusts have been categorised into bandings indicating whether a trust's SHMI is 'higher than expected', 'as expected' or 'lower than expected'. For any given number of expected deaths, a range of observed deaths is considered to be 'as expected'. If the observed number of deaths falls outside of this range, the trust in question is considered to have a higher or lower SHMI than expected. The expected number of deaths is a statistical construct and is not a count of patients. The difference between the number of observed deaths and the number of expected deaths cannot be interpreted as the number of avoidable deaths or excess deaths for the trust. The SHMI is not a measure of quality of care. A higher than expected number of deaths should not immediately be interpreted as indicating poor performance and instead should be viewed as a 'smoke alarm' which requires further investigation. Similarly, an 'as expected' or 'lower than expected' SHMI should not immediately be interpreted as indicating satisfactory or good performance. Trusts may be located at multiple sites and may be responsible for 1 or more hospitals. A breakdown of the data by site of treatment is also provided, as well as a breakdown of the data by diagnosis group. Further background information and supporting documents, including information on how to interpret the SHMI, are available on the SHMI homepage (see Related Links).

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.

United Kingdom UK: Intentional Homicides: per 100,000 People data was reported at 1.202 Ratio in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 0.992 Ratio for 2015. United Kingdom UK: Intentional Homicides: per 100,000 People data is updated yearly, averaging 1.399 Ratio from Dec 1995 (Median) to 2016, with 22 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1.865 Ratio in 2002 and a record low of 0.907 Ratio in 2014. United Kingdom UK: Intentional Homicides: per 100,000 People data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.World Bank.WDI: Health Statistics. Intentional homicides are estimates of unlawful homicides purposely inflicted as a result of domestic disputes, interpersonal violence, violent conflicts over land resources, intergang violence over turf or control, and predatory violence and killing by armed groups. Intentional homicide does not include all intentional killing; the difference is usually in the organization of the killing. Individuals or small groups usually commit homicide, whereas killing in armed conflict is usually committed by fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members and is thus usually excluded.; ; UN Office on Drugs and Crime's International Homicide Statistics database.; Weighted average;

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Great Britain Historical Database has been assembled as part of the ongoing Great Britain Historical GIS Project. The project aims to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain at sub-county scales. Further information about the project is available on A Vision of Britain webpages, where users can browse the database's documentation system online.

These data were originally published in the reports of the Registrar-General for England and Wales. They were computerised by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project and its collaborators. They form 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.

This study mainly comprises data from the RG's Annual Reports, with some data from the Quarterly Returns. A very extensive transcription from the Decennial Supplements forms a separate study.

Latest edition information

For the second edition (December 2022) the previous data and documentation files were replaced with new versions, and access conditions were changed from safeguarded to open access.

Annual counts of births and deaths for all Registration Districts in all years 1850 to 1910, with marriages for some years.

Annual cause-of-death data for all Registration Districts in all years, 1856 to 1910. The causes of death focus on epidemic diseases.

Annual age-specific mortality data for all Registration Districts for 1840-42, 1850-52, 1860-1882, 1890-92, 1900-02, 1908-1910 (i.e. for most of the period, census years plus immediately adjacent years).

Quarterly counts of births, deaths and selected causes of death from the Registrar-General's Quarterly Returns, for Registration sub-Districts. This is limited to (1) a full transcription of all four quarters for each census year within the period covered by the Quarterly Returns: 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911; (2) numbers of births and infant deaths in all sub-districts in the County of London from the full run of reports from 1871 to 1911; and (3) a full transcription of all four quarters of 1876, but limited to the north-west of England, defined as Cheshire, Lancashire and Westmorland plus Chapel-en-le-Frith and Hayfield Registration Districts in Derbyshire and Saddleworth in the West Riding.

Individual cholera deaths in London in summer and autumn 1866 arranged by date and causes of death, plus a variant which is adjusted for deaths in hospitals (these data were created by Graham Mooney).

A separate UKDS study contains decennial age-specific cause of death data for all Registration Districts in all decades from 1851-60 to 1901-10.

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

There were 583 homicides recorded in England and Wales in 2023/24, two more than in the previous reporting year, when there were 581 homicides. Between 2002/03 and 2013/14 the number of homicides in England and Wales fell significantly, from 1,047, to 533. The recent rise in homicides has occurred alongside an increase in the overall number of crimes, with police officials linking this to long-term cuts to their manpower and resources. Knives involved in over 40 percent of homicides In the 2022/23 reporting year, homicides involving a sharp instrument were involved in 244 incidents, a decline on the previous reporting year, when there were 282 such homicides. As a proportion of all homicides, sharp instruments were the main method of killing, and were used in 41.4 percent of all homicides in 2022/23. Firearm homicides are quite rare in England and Wales with shooting homicides only accounting for 4.9 percent of all homicides in the same reporting year. Between 2011/12 and 2022/23, there were 347 firearm homicides in England and Wales, compared with 2,785 knife homicides in the same period. Homicide rate highest in North East England Although London, with 124 homicides, was the UK region with the highest number of homicides in 2022/23, it was behind North East England when it came to the homicide rate. At 15.9 homicides per one million people, the North East was ahead of London at 12.9, and the rest of England and Wales, at 10.1. When compared with the rest of the UK, the homicide rate in England and Wales was above that of Scotland, which was 9, but below Northern Ireland at 12.6. Although Scotland's homicide rate is currently lower than that of England and Wales, before 2015/16 it was consistently higher, particularly in 2004/05 when it was 27, compared with 16.4 in England and Wales.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

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.

The main annual table for local government districts 1911-73 provides an estimate of total population and counts of births and deaths for all years. Pre-1973, births are categorised by legitimacy as well as sex. Infant deaths under 1 year are counted for all years, stillbirths and deaths under 4 weeks from 1949, and deaths under 1 week from 1958. Various rates are also computed. Slightly different data were reported during World War 2.

The table of annual age-specific causes of death holds data for census years only, 1921 to 1971,for, typically, "London and Metropolitan Boroughs, County Boroughs, Aggregates of other Urban and of Rural Districts in each Administrative County", for varying numbers of causes of death (1921 = 33, 1961 = 64, 1971 = 7) and, generally, ten-year age bands.

The other two tables provide more information on causes of death and age at death, but only for the 1910s and 1920s (Graham Mooney contributed to the table of causes of death 1911-20).

Saint Kitts and Nevis saw a murder rate of 65 per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the most dangerous country for this kind of crime worldwide as of 2023. Interestingly, El Salvador, which long had the highest global homicide rates, has dropped out of the top 20 after a high number of gang members have been incarcerated. Meanwhile, Celaya in Mexico was the most dangerous city for murders. Violent conflicts worldwide Notably, these figures do not include deaths that resulted from war or a violent conflict. While there is a persistent number of conflicts worldwide, resulting casualties are not considered murders. Partially due to this reason, homicide rates in Latin America are higher than those in Afghanistan or Syria. A different definition of murder in these circumstances could change the rate significantly in some countries. Causes of death Also noteworthy is that murders are usually not random events. In the United States, the circumstances of murders are most commonly arguments, followed by narcotics incidents and robberies. Additionally, murders are not a leading cause of death. Heart diseases, strokes and cancer pose a greater threat to life than violent crime.

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

There has been little research on United States homicide rates from a long-term perspective, primarily because there has been no consistent data series on a particular place preceding the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), which began its first full year in 1931. To fill this research gap, this project created a data series on homicides per capita for New York City that spans two centuries. The goal was to create a site-specific, individual-based data series that could be used to examine major social shifts related to homicide, such as mass immigration, urban growth, war, demographic changes, and changes in laws. Data were also gathered on various other sites, particularly in England, to allow for comparisons on important issues, such as the post-World War II wave of violence. The basic approach to the data collection was to obtain the best possible estimate of annual counts and the most complete information on individual homicides. The annual count data (Parts 1 and 3) were derived from multiple sources, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports and Supplementary Homicide Reports, as well as other official counts from the New York City Police Department and the City Inspector in the early 19th century. The data include a combined count of murder and manslaughter because charge bargaining often blurs this legal distinction. The individual-level data (Part 2) were drawn from coroners' indictments held by the New York City Municipal Archives, and from daily newspapers. Duplication was avoided by keeping a record for each victim. The estimation technique known as "capture-recapture" was used to estimate homicides not listed in either source. Part 1 variables include counts of New York City homicides, arrests, and convictions, as well as the homicide rate, race or ethnicity and gender of victims, type of weapon used, and source of data. Part 2 includes the date of the murder, the age, sex, and race of the offender and victim, and whether the case led to an arrest, trial, conviction, execution, or pardon. Part 3 contains annual homicide counts and rates for various comparison sites including Liverpool, London, Kent, Canada, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco.

This file contains the list of codes and general categories 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, a list of exemplar strings in the English language, and a categorisation for infant mortality. 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: Historic cause of death coding and classification scheme for individual-level causes of death – Codes [https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109961]

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 – English language historic strings [https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109962] Historic cause of death coding and classification scheme for individual-level causes of death – Infant Categorisations [https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109963]

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_Masterlist.xlsx Excel file consisting of 3 worksheets: 1) ReadMe sheet 2) Masterlist
3) 2020to2024transfer

Separate csv files for 2) and 3) containing the same information.

This file builds on a previous, unpublished version of ICD10h (dating from 2020). The 2020to2024transfer file enables data coded to the earlier version to be updated to the current version.

METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION

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

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: Masterlist

Number of variables: 10

Number of cases/rows: 14088

Variable List: IDMasterlist (a unique ID number for Masterlist table) ICD10h (ICD10h code) ICD10 (ICD10 code) ICD10_2levelCATEGORY (ICD10 first part of 2 level categorisation) ICD10_2levelCAUSE (ICD10 second part of 2 level categorisation) ICD10h_DESCRIPTION (ICD10h description - this differs from ICD10_2levelCAUSE only where there is a specific historical code) Histcat (category of general historical categorisation) DoNotUse (1=do not use for mortality coding – ICD10 asterisk codes) NotForUnderlying (1=do not use for underlying mortality codes) GenderSpecific (0=can be used for men or women; 1=use for men only; 2=use for women only)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: 2020to2024transfer

Number of variables: 4

Number of cases/rows: 13763

Variable List: ID2024_transfer (unique ID for 2020to2024transfer table) IDoct2020Masterlist (ID variable from the 2020 Masterlist) ICD10h_oct2020 (ICD10h from the October 2020 Masterlist) ICD10h2024 (ICD10h value from the current version of the Masterlist)

Over 3,500 people were killed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 2001 - of these, over 2,000 have been attributed to republican paramilitaries, and over 1,000 were attributed to loyalist paramilitaries. Almost half of all killings during the Troubles have been attributed to the Irish Republican Army alone (also known as the Provisional IRA), while a much smaller number was attributed to British security forces. These figures are in stark contrast to those regarding death by organization or affiliation, where over 50 percent of all deaths were of civilians, one third was of British security forces, and just 16 percent of deaths were recorded as paramilitary deaths from either side.

In 2023/24, 22 homicide offences involved the use of a firearm in England and Wales, compared with 29 in the previous reporting year. Overall, there were 570 homicides in England and Wales in 2023/24, with 262 of these involving a knife or other sharp instrument.

Over 1,800 of all killings committed during the Troubles have been attributed to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). While the Troubles is often described as a "Catholic versus Protestant" or "republican versus loyalist" conflict, the number of loyalist paramilitaries killed by the IRA was just 45 people in total, or 2.5 percent of total IRA killings. In fact, it was British security forces, such as army personnel or the police force (Royal Ulster Constabulary), who suffered the largest number of killings by the IRA, with over 1,000 deaths, or over 55 percent of the IRA's total.