FOI reference: FOI-2026-3369
You asked
Please provide data on male suicide rates, categorised by demographics, with a focus on potential correlations with financial stress indicators.
Could you please provide any datasets or insights on these interactions?
We said
Thank you for your request.
We hold mortality data, which is collected through the death registration process in England and Wales. This enables us to publish regular statistics on suicides in England and Wales.
Our regular statistics are limited to information collected through the death registration process, covering demographic breakdowns such as sex, age, and area of usual residence of the deceased. We do not collect any information on the finances or income of the deceased through the death registration process. We therefore unfortunately do not hold the data you have requested.
In case it is helpful, our latest annual suicide bulletin provides commentary on suicides registered between 1981 and 2024. Similarly, our latest quarterly suicide death registrations in England provides commentary on suicides registered in the first six months of 2025 based on the best available provisional data.
We also have information on suicide by occupation, our last report was published in 2017. It provides an analysis of deaths from suicide by sex, registered in England between 2011 and 2015 among those aged 20 to 64 years. We have been working on an update to be published by next year.
To fill in evidence gaps, we have also linked our death registration data with other data sources. The linkage of Census 2021 data to death registrations and administrative NHS hospital records enabled us to produce an article on Self-harm and suicide by sexual orientation, England and Wales: March 2021 to December 2023. In addition to this, in 2023 we produced an article exploring Sociodemographic inequalities in suicides in England and Wales: 2011 to 2021, where again data linkage allowed breakdowns such as:
ethnicity
religious affiliation
partnership status
socioeconomic status
armed forces membership
disability status
We have also published analysis into the relationship between cost of living and depression in adults, and the impacts of increased cost of living on adults, using data from the ONS's Opinions and Lifestyle Survey and Wealth and Assets Survey. These do not reference our data on suicides but do report on financial stress.