Death figures by occupation and by cause of death are provided by death registration. This is a descriptive study. It has been carried out every ten years since 1851 for England and Wales and six times since 1891 for Scotland. In Great Britain, all deaths must be registered with a Registrar of Births and Deaths. For this purpose, a medical certificate is provided to the registrar which includes the indicators below.
Considerable data is also available on microfiches.
Access to other tables not published or to special ad hoc studies is also possible. Main actual users are probably academic researchers. As mentioned in the last report, the major uses of the series are the provision of background data for more specific studies and quick checks on presumed associations between a cause of death and an occupation. While a few examples exist, it has been noted that the Supplements rarely generate new hypotheses, though this may be partly a product of the way they have been used. Improvements should try to make such generations of hypotheses easier.