Indicator
Inequalities in alcohol-specific deaths
Published
5 June 2025
Last updated
23 October 2026
Time to read
About 2 mins
About 2 mins
Key Points
- In England, Wales and Scotland, the alcohol-specific death rates for people living in the most deprived areas are more than double that for people living in the least deprived areas.
- In 2024, Northern Ireland, the North East of England and Scotland had higher rates of alcohol-specific deaths than Wales and the other English regions.
- In the UK, the alcohol-specific death rate for men is more than double that for women.
Harmful alcohol use is a major health risk factor which can negatively affect our physical, mental and social wellbeing. It can also impact our access to other building blocks of health, for example, alcohol misuse can damage our relationships and affect our ability to work.
This chart shows the alcohol-specific death rate (age-standardised) per 100,000 people by age, sex, ethnicity, region and deprivation in the UK in 2024.
- The alcohol-specific death rate increases for adults up to the age of 55–59 years. People aged 55–59 have the highest alcohol-specific death rate at 35.8 deaths per 100,000. For people older than this, the rate decreases to 4.5 deaths per 100,000 for people aged 90 or older.
- The alcohol-specific death rate for men is more than twice that for women – 20.2 deaths per 100,000 compared to 9.7.
- The alcohol-specific death rate is higher in the most deprived areas compared to the least derived areas. For readability, data presented are for men only. A similar pattern is seen for women – a higher alcohol-specific death rate for the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas but rates are lower, reflecting the differences seen by sex. The alcohol-specific death rates per 100,000 for women for the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived are 15.4 vs 5.1 in England, 17.5 vs 6.9 in Wales and 22.1 vs 6.5 in Scotland.
- White people have the highest alcohol-specific death rates at 11.6 deaths per 100,000, compared to Pakistani people, who have the lowest rate at 1.5.
- Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North East of England have the highest alcohol-specific death rates. While England has lower overall alcohol-specific death rates, this hides regional variation. The North East has the highest rate in England of 21.1 deaths per 100,000, almost twice as high as London, which has the lowest at 10.9.
- Excluding the age breakdown, all death rates are age-standardised – this refers to a weighted average of the age-specific death rates per 100,000 people.
- Alcohol-specific deaths only include those health conditions in which each death is a direct consequence of alcohol (that is, wholly attributable causes such as alcoholic liver disease). It does not include all deaths that can be attributed to alcohol.
- Due to data availability, ethnicity data only cover England and Wales and the period 2017–19, and are not available for Bangladeshi people.
- Deprivation is separated by country as each country has its own deprivation index. Deprivation data are presented for men only and deprivation data are not available for Northern Ireland.
- Ethnicity groups are based on those given in the data.
Source: Office for National Statistics, Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK, 2001 to 2024; Office for National Statistics, Alcohol-specific deaths by ethnic group, England and Wales: 2012 to 2019; National Records of Scotland, Alcohol-specific deaths, 2024.
