Spotlight
Child and infant mortality in England and Wales: 2020
What's in the bulletin?
- In 2020, 2,226 infant deaths (aged under one year) and 789 child deaths (aged 1 to 15 years) occurred in England and Wales; these are the lowest numbers of infant and child deaths since records began in 1980.
- In 2020, the infant mortality rate was 3.6 deaths per 1,000 live births in England and Wales; while this follows a general decline since 1980, the infant mortality rate has remained fairly stable since 2014.
- In 2020, there were 11 deaths of children aged 28 days to 15 years where the underlying cause was “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)”.
Cause of death coding in mortality statistics, software changes: January 2020
The differences in mortality data for England and Wales coded to ICD-10, produced by changing from cause of death coding using the software IRIS 4.2.3 to the updated version MUSE 5.5.Datasets related to Stillbirths
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Child mortality (death cohort) tables in England and Wales
Live births, stillbirths and linked infant deaths occurring annually in England and Wales, and associated risk factors.
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Birth characteristics
Annual live births in England and Wales by sex, birthweight, gestational age, ethnicity and month, maternities by place of birth and with multiple births, and stillbirths by age of parents and calendar quarter.
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Births in England and Wales: summary tables
Annual summary statistics on live births and stillbirths, by sex, age of mother, whether inside marriage or civil partnership, percentage of non-UK-born mothers, birth rates and births by mothers' area of usual residence.
Publications related to Stillbirths
Statistical bulletins
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Child and infant mortality in England and Wales: 2020
Stillbirths, infant and childhood deaths occurring annually in England and Wales, and associated risk factors.
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Deaths registered in England and Wales: 2021
Registered deaths by age, sex, selected underlying causes of death and the leading causes of death. Contains death rates and death registrations by area of residence and single year of age.
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Births in England and Wales: 2020
Live births, stillbirths and the intensity of childbearing, measured by the total fertility rate.
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Births by parents’ characteristics in England and Wales: 2016
Annual live births by age of mother and father, type of registration, median interval between births, number of previous live-born children and National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC).
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Impact of the implementation of IRIS software for ICD-10 cause of death coding on stillbirth and neonatal death statistics: England and Wales
Impact of the implementation of IRIS cause of death coding software on stillbirths and neonatal deaths
Articles
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Cause of death coding in mortality statistics, software changes
The software used to code death registrations in England and Wales changed from MUSE 5.5 to MUSE 5.8 on 1 January 2022. This paper details the differences in cause of death coding when using MUSE 5.5 software compared with the updated MUSE 5.8 as demonstrated on a sample of mortality data for England and Wales.
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UK drops in European child mortality rankings
The UK has dropped several ranks in the European Union rankings of child mortality since 1990, recent analysis of WHO and ONS data has found.
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