The Leading Causes of Death in the UK, Ranked
Dementia, heart disease, lung disease, stroke and cancer: the leading causes of death in the UK, ranked, and how they differ by age, sex and nation.
Picture a GP surgery in a market town on a grey Thursday afternoon. In one room, a doctor is completing a medical certificate of cause of death for a 91-year-old woman who had lived with Alzheimer's disease for eight years. In the next room, a colleague is talking to a 58-year-old builder about the chest pains he has been ignoring since the spring. Down the corridor, a practice nurse is checking the inhaler technique of a retired miner who can no longer climb the stairs to his bedroom.
Those three rooms hold most of the story of how people in the UK die. Not car crashes, not violence, not exotic infections. Instead, a handful of slow, long illnesses that build over decades and arrive, for most people, after the age of 75. Around 660,000 people die in the UK every year, and you can watch the global equivalent ticking upward on our live death counter. This article is about what is written on those certificates.
The ranking: England and Wales
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) ranks causes of death using a list of single-cause groupings. That method splits cancer into its separate types, which is why no single cancer appears at the top. Here are the leading causes in recent years for England and Wales, where around 580,000 deaths are registered annually.
| Rank | Leading cause (England and Wales) | Approx. deaths per year | Share of deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dementia and Alzheimer's disease | ~66,000 | ~11% |
| 2 | Ischaemic heart disease | ~58,000 | ~10% |
| 3 | Chronic lower respiratory diseases (mainly COPD) | ~30,000 | ~5% |
| 4 | Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke) | ~29,000 | ~5% |
| 5 | Lung cancer | ~28,000 | ~5% |
| 6 | Influenza and pneumonia | ~25,000 | ~4% |
| 7 | Colorectal cancer | ~14,000 | ~2.5% |
| 8 | Heart failure and other heart diseases | ~12,000 | ~2% |
| 9 | Prostate cancer | ~10,500 | ~2% |
| 10 | Breast cancer | ~10,000 | ~2% |
Figures are rounded from recent ONS annual releases. Exact positions shift slightly from year to year, especially lower down the list.
Dementia sits at the top, and it has done in almost every year since 2015, apart from the pandemic years when COVID-19 briefly took first place. It overtook heart disease not because dementia suddenly became more common at any given age, but because people now survive heart disease long enough to develop dementia instead. We explain that shift in dementia deaths have doubled in 20 years, and the global numbers are on our dementia page.
The bigger picture: grouped causes
The single-cause ranking is useful, but it hides how dominant the two big disease families really are. Group every cancer together, and every disease of the heart and blood vessels together, and the order changes completely.
| Disease group (UK) | Approx. deaths per year | Approx. per day | Share of UK deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| All cancers | ~167,000 | ~460 | ~25% |
| All heart and circulatory diseases | ~175,000 | ~480 | ~26% |
| Dementia and Alzheimer's | ~75,000 | ~205 | ~11% |
| Respiratory diseases (all types) | ~80,000 | ~220 | ~12% |
| External causes (accidents, suicide, drugs, violence) | ~30,000 | ~80 | ~4.5% |
Sources for the grouped figures are Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation, and the two families together account for roughly half of every death in the country. Heart and circulatory disease includes heart attacks, heart failure, stroke and vascular dementia, which is why it edges out cancer here. You can compare both with the global picture on our cardiovascular and cancer pages.
Men and women die of different things
The UK's ranking looks different depending on whether you are looking at men or women. That is mostly because women live about four years longer, and the diseases of very old age catch them more often.
| Rank | Men (England and Wales) | Women (England and Wales) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ischaemic heart disease | Dementia and Alzheimer's disease |
| 2 | Dementia and Alzheimer's disease | Ischaemic heart disease |
| 3 | Lung cancer | Stroke |
| 4 | Chronic lower respiratory diseases | Chronic lower respiratory diseases |
| 5 | Stroke | Influenza and pneumonia |
For women, dementia is the leading cause by a wide margin, accounting for roughly one in seven female deaths in England and Wales. Around two thirds of people living with dementia in the UK are women. For men, heart disease is still number one, and men die of it on average about a decade earlier than women do.
Prostate cancer and breast cancer each kill roughly 10,000 to 12,000 people a year across the UK, and they sit in very similar positions in their respective lists. We look at the female side of this in detail in the leading causes of death in women, and at the male side in why men die younger than women.
The leading cause changes with age
The overall ranking is dominated by people over 75, because that is when most deaths happen. Look at younger age groups on their own and the picture is almost unrecognisable.
| Age group | Leading cause (men) | Leading cause (women) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 19 | Accidents and injuries | Accidents and injuries |
| 20 to 34 | Suicide and accidental poisoning (mainly drugs) | Suicide and accidental poisoning |
| 35 to 49 | Accidental poisoning (mainly drugs) | Breast cancer |
| 50 to 64 | Ischaemic heart disease | Breast cancer and lung cancer |
| 65 to 79 | Ischaemic heart disease | Lung cancer |
| 80 and over | Dementia and Alzheimer's disease | Dementia and Alzheimer's disease |
Pattern based on ONS leading-cause analyses by age and sex; the exact top cause in some bands varies between years.
The middle of that table is the uncomfortable part. Among men aged 20 to 49, the biggest killers are suicide and drug poisoning, not disease. Among women aged 35 to 64, breast cancer leads. These are the deaths that take decades of life rather than months, and they are where prevention has the most to gain.
If you or someone close to you is struggling, Samaritans can be reached free, at any hour, on 116 123. Our suicide page has more on the global picture, and we cover the youngest age groups worldwide in the leading causes of death for young people.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
Each nation runs its own registration system, and the rankings differ in small but telling ways.
| Nation | Deaths per year (approx.) | Leading single causes | Statistics body |
|---|---|---|---|
| England | ~540,000 | Dementia, then ischaemic heart disease | ONS |
| Wales | ~35,000 | Ischaemic heart disease and dementia close together | ONS |
| Scotland | ~62,000 | Ischaemic heart disease and dementia trade the top spot | National Records of Scotland |
| Northern Ireland | ~16,000 | Cancers as a group lead; heart disease and dementia next | NISRA |
Scotland stands out for causes further down the list. Its rates of drug misuse deaths have been the highest in Europe for several years, and its alcohol-specific death rate is well above England's. Both push Scotland's death rates among working-age adults higher than in any other UK nation, which is part of why Scottish life expectancy trails the rest of the country. For the full UK totals by nation, see how many people die in the UK every day.
How the ranking has changed
A century ago, the UK's leading causes of death looked much more like those of a low-income country today. Infections dominated, and many deaths were of babies and young children.
| Era | Leading causes of death in England and Wales (approx. order) |
|---|---|
| 1900s | Respiratory infections and pneumonia, tuberculosis, infant diarrhoea, heart disease |
| 1950s | Heart disease, cancer, stroke, bronchitis |
| 1990s | Ischaemic heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, pneumonia |
| 2010s | Ischaemic heart disease, then dementia (from 2015) |
| 2020s | Dementia, ischaemic heart disease, COVID-19 (2020 and 2021 only), COPD |
Tuberculosis, which killed tens of thousands of Britons a year in 1900, now causes only a few hundred UK deaths a year. Its global story is very different, as we explain in tuberculosis is still killing over a million people a year.
The biggest single change of the last 50 years is the collapse in heart attack deaths. Death rates from ischaemic heart disease in the UK have fallen by well over two thirds since the 1970s, thanks to falling smoking rates, statins, blood pressure treatment and far better emergency care. That success is exactly why dementia now leads the list.
The preventable share
Most of the causes at the top of the UK list are strongly linked to a small number of risk factors. That does not mean every death is avoidable, but it does mean a large share of early deaths are.
| Risk factor | Main causes it drives | Approx. UK deaths linked per year |
|---|---|---|
| Smoking | Lung cancer, COPD, heart disease, stroke | ~75,000 |
| High blood pressure | Heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, vascular dementia | Tens of thousands |
| Excess weight and poor diet | Heart disease, diabetes, several cancers | Tens of thousands |
| Alcohol | Liver disease, cancers, injuries | ~10,000 alcohol-specific, many more related |
| Drugs | Accidental poisoning | ~7,000 |
The ONS classifies roughly one in five deaths in the UK as "avoidable", meaning they could largely have been prevented or treated in time. Many of those sit in the middle of the age table above. High blood pressure is a particularly quiet killer, because it causes no symptoms until it causes a stroke or heart attack; we look at it in how many people die from high blood pressure every day. Smoking still sits behind the fifth-ranked cause, lung cancer, which we cover in how many people die from lung cancer every day.
How the UK compares with the world
The UK's leading causes are typical of a wealthy, ageing country. The global ranking looks noticeably different, because infections, newborn deaths and road injuries still kill millions in lower-income countries.
| Rank | UK (England and Wales) | World (WHO) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dementia and Alzheimer's | Ischaemic heart disease |
| 2 | Ischaemic heart disease | Stroke |
| 3 | COPD | COPD |
| 4 | Stroke | Lower respiratory infections |
| 5 | Lung cancer | Lung cancer |
You can explore those global causes on our causes of death page, see where the UK sits on the United Kingdom page, or set any two causes side by side with the compare causes tool. For the American equivalent of this list, see the leading causes of death in the US.
What it means for you
Statistics like these can feel abstract, but they translate into a fairly clear set of priorities for anyone hoping to live a long life in Britain. Do not smoke. Get your blood pressure checked, especially after 40, which the NHS Health Check offers free in England. Stay active, because physical activity lowers the risk of heart disease, stroke, several cancers and dementia at the same time. Take chest pain, breathlessness and unexplained weight loss seriously.
Our Death Clock gives a rough estimate of how these factors add up for someone of your age and sex, and the risk calculator shows which habits move the numbers most.
While you were reading this
You have spent about 12 minutes with this article. In that time, roughly 15 people have died in the UK. Around four of them died of cancer, around four of heart and circulatory disease, and close to two of dementia. Most were over 80. One or two were younger than 50, and for them the cause was more likely to be a drug, an accident or a decision taken in a very dark moment.
Across the whole world, more than 1,400 people died in those same 12 minutes. You can watch that number keep rising on our live death counter, or see today's running total on the deaths today page.
Data sources: Office for National Statistics (deaths registered in England and Wales, leading causes of death, avoidable mortality), National Records of Scotland, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation, Alzheimer's Society, World Health Organization Global Health Estimates. Figures are rounded and represent recent annual estimates; rankings can change from year to year. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.
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