You asked
Please tell me:
(1) How you arrived at your BAME stats given ethnicity isn't on death certificate.
(2) Have you categorised every 'occupation' on all the death certs, in order to classify blue/white collar jobs?
(3) How did you extrapolate BAME from 2011 census?
I don't have Excel so please send any tables In PDf format.
We said
Thank you for your request.
In relation to the article 'Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by ethnic group, England and Wales: 2 March 2020 to 10 April 2020', our analyses were based on a unique linked dataset that encompasses Census 2011 records and death registrations with England and Wales coverage. It was created by first linking the 2011 Census to the Patient Register (PR) records between 2011 and 2013 where NHS number was added to those census records identified in the patient register. Second, by using an NHS number, and a deterministic match key linkage method where the NHS number was unavailable, death registrations were linked to 2011 Census records up to 17 April 2020. Self-reported ethnicity is available from the Census, and we used this to create our analysis based on ethnicity. Examination of linkage rates for ethnic groups showed distributions at 2011 Census and the linked population were relatively consistent across all categories, although there was more significant variation in unlinked records. For all ethnic groups, linkage rates of NHS number exceeded 80% in all cases.
We did not quote occupation directly in our release, but instead looked at The National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-Sec), which provides an indication of socio-economic position based on occupation. It is an Office for National Statistics (ONS) standard classification. This classification again was taken from 2011 census records. We did consider how this may have changed since 2011 but found minimal impact in our investigations. The following methodology report discusses this in more detail.\ The reason we did not use occupation from the death record, was that it would only provide the most up to date occupation of those who have died, and for rates we needed an underlying population at risk. Moreover, occupation coding at death is incomplete for those at retirement age or over. Therefore, there would have been potential for bias due to missing data. We are looking to cross-tabulate occupation at death by ethnic group in the next release, to be published in June 2020, but this depends on investigations into potential bias. We will also check the consistency between occupation at census and occupation recorded at death to assess how much change has taken place for those that have occupation recorded in both data sources.
Table 1 shows the ethnic breakdowns used in the publication:
| Ethnic breakdowns used | Their detailed composition |
|---|---|
| White | White British; Irish; Gypsy or Irish Traveller; Other White |
| Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups | White and Black Caribbean; White and Asian; White and Black African; Other Mixed |
| Indian | Indian |
| Bangladeshi and Pakistani | Bangladeshi and Pakistani |
| Chinese | Chinese |
| Black | Black Caribbean; Black African; Black Other |
| Other ethnic group | Asian other; Arab; Other ethnic group |