Counting Deaths (Part 1)

A comparison of official counts all cause deaths by date of registration (England) with counts by date of occurrence

When it comes to counting death the Office for National Statistics (ONS) prefer to use the date of registration rather than the actual date of death – you can find many examples here. Delays are par for the course and the ONS explain these in this handy document, along with the various stages undertaken before a death appears in the national statistics. The greatest delays in processing occur during holiday periods, especially over the festive season, and these can produce artefact that can throw analyses, a fine example being my series on Vaccines & Death that is currently unfinished at part 9 owing to methodological headaches.

We may ask why the ONS don’t adopt date of death as the standard for all outputs instead of date of registration, the actual date of death being the rather obvious criterion. This question was put to them and here is the reply from one of their officers:

Legally a person has 5 days to register a death with the General Register Office. These registrations come th…