Mortality by ethnic group following death certification reform, England and Wales: 2025

• In 2025, 79.6% of the 570,988 deaths registered in England and Wales had a known ethnic group recorded on their death certificate; the proportion with an unknown ethnic group decreased from 20.7% in September 2024 to 19.2% in December 2025.

• Deaths registered in 2025 were linked to Census 2021 and Hospital Episode Statistics (HES); ethnic groups reported on death certificates were compared with these other sources to check if they matched for each person.

• Most deaths were successfully linked to Census 2021 and HES data (between 77.4% and 83.7% across the data sources).

• The vast majority of all deaths that were linked had the same ethnic group on both sources (with an 18-category ethnic group agreement by source of 94.5% for Census 2021, 93.9% for HES modal, and 93.3% for HES recency); there was minimal change in agreement rates (with Census 2021) when compared with data in our Death certification reform, England and Wales: 9 September 2024 to 30 June 2025 (provisional data) article.

• For the broader five-category ethnic groups, agreement is generally high across data sources for the "White", "Asian", and "Black" ethnic groups, and low for the "Mixed or Multiple" and "Other" ethnic groups.

• For more the detailed 18-category ethnic groups, agreement is high across data sources for "White British", "Bangladeshi", "Pakistani", "Chinese", and "Indian" ethnic groups, but it is lower for all other groups.

• The ethnic group data from death registrations is complete and accurate enough to enable statistics on mortality broken down by ethnic groups, although quality is lower for smaller groups; we advise users to carefully consider the data's limitations and bias when drawing conclusions.

Registered Deaths 2025

The ethnic group of a deceased person is recorded on their medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD) using the self-declared ethnicity recorded on the patient's medical record.

The 18-category MCCD ethnic groups are: 

1. White: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British 
2. White: Irish 
3. White: Gypsy or Irish Traveller 
4. White: any other White background 
5. Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups: White and Black Caribbean 
6. Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups: White and Black African 
7. Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups: White and Asian 
8. Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups: Other Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups 
9. Asian or Asian British: Indian 
10. Asian or Asian British: Pakistani 
11. Asian or Asian British: Bangladeshi 
12. Asian or Asian British: Chinese 
13. Asian or Asian British: any other Asian Background
14. Black or African or Caribbean or Black British: Caribbean 
15. Black or African or Caribbean or Black British: African 
16. Black or African or Caribbean or Black British: Other Black or African or Caribbean background 
17. Other ethnic group: Arab 
18. Other ethnic group: any other ethnic group 

There is also a 19th category for when the ethnic group is not known.

The 18 MCCD ethnic groups have been aggregated to the following five-category ethnic groups:

1. White 
2. Mixed or Multiple
3. Asian or Asian British 
4. Black or African or Caribbean or Black British 
5. Other 

Census 2021

Census 2021 includes 19 ethnic groups of a known ethnicity, including a newly implemented Roma category, while the MCCD has 18 categories of a known ethnicity. Individuals who self-reported their ethnicity in Census 2021 as Roma were therefore not included in the dataset linking together Census 2021 and MCCD data.

Census data are the most complete source of self-reported ethnicity information for the whole population, and therefore widely regarded as the most reliable source of ethnicity data for England. Some ethnic group responses in the census data may be provided by a proxy; for example, a parent on behalf of a child who cannot respond for themselves.

Of all 570,988 deaths registered in 2025, 477,665 (83.7%) were successfully linked to the corresponding Census 2021 record for that individual. This is small decrease compared with our previous analysis, which looked at death registrations from September 2024 to June 2025, and had an achieved linkage of 84.2%. This is because more time has passed since Census Day 2021 and the population has changed over time.

Hospital Episode Statistics

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) are a database containing details of all attendances at NHS hospitals in England. It is made up of three sub-datasets:

• accident and emergency

• admitted patient care

• outpatients

HES data only contains 16 ethnic group categories and it does not include the "White: Gypsy or Irish Traveller" or "Other ethnic group: Arab" categories.

Ethnic group is collected per hospital visit, and some individuals have multiple different ethnic groups recorded. The HES ethnic groups were processed into two categories: the most recent ethnic group provided (HES recency), and the most common ethnic group provided (HES modal).

Of all 570,988 deaths registered in 2025, 441,728 (77.4%) were successfully linked to the corresponding HES recency record for that individual.

Of all 570,988 deaths registered in 2025, 442,809 (77.6%) were successfully linked to the corresponding HES modal record for that individual.

HES data sources contain health records collected from hospitals in England only, so most deaths in Wales are not expected to link.

Quality

Limitations regarding our methodology, which are applicable to this current release, are detailed in Section 7: Data sources and quality of our Quality of ethnicity data in health-related administrative data sources, England: November 2023 article.