The time taken to register a death

Abstract

This article analyses delays in the registration of death and discusses their effect on mortality statistics. It is shown that the longest delays arise when deaths are the subject of a coroner's inquest, in particular deaths in road traffic accidents. These delays mean that it may be many months before an acceptable proportion of deaths occurring in a year have been registered, so affecting how early a reliable extract of annual data can be taken. It also shows that the difference in the number of deaths occurring and the number registered in a year is strongly influenced by the weekdays on which holidays fall at the New Year.