Great Britain Historical Database: Vital Statistics for England and Wales 1911-1973

DOI

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.

Main Topics:

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).

No sampling (total universe)

Transcription

Compilation/Synthesis

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-9035-1
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2003.05.001
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(03)00149-7
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-985X.2005.00370.x
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1002/ijpg.203
Metadata Access https://datacatalogue.cessda.eu/oai-pmh/v0/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_ddi25&identifier=89bf983d68108eff79abf94c794b1e8e3f89b9396e5a58d85326201a6deb73f9
Provenance
Creator Southall, H. R., University of Portsmouth, School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences; Mooney, G., University of Portsmouth, Department of Geography
Publisher UK Data Service
Publication Year 2022
Funding Reference Wellcome Trust; Economic and Social Research Council
Rights Copyright Southall, H.R., University of Portsmouth, Mooney, G., University of Portsmouth; <p><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/assets/img/logo-cc-sa.png" /></a>&nbsp; The Data Collection is to be made available to any user without the requirement for registration for download/access under a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International</a> Licence.</p>
OpenAccess true
Representation
Discipline Geography; Geosciences; Geospheric Sciences; History; Humanities; Natural Sciences
Spatial Coverage England and Wales