Data on births by ethnic group now available for England and Wales

Raleigh says that ethnic origin is not known for sentinel outcomes—such as the 636 000 births and 470 000 deaths annually in England.1 However, we have just published data by ethnic group on all births in England and Wales in 2005.2 Like the data recently published by the Office for National Statistics on infant mortality by ethnic origin3 that is mentioned by Raleigh, this uses ethnic group information collected in the NHS Numbers for Babies dataset.

These are the first statistics on ethnic differences in births and birth outcomes for England and Wales as a whole. They show considerable ethnic diversity in the sociodemographic characteristics of births, as well as in birth weight and gestational age (table⇓). For example, compared with the white groups, the proportion of low birthweight live singletons was much higher in the Caribbean and all the Asian groups. Ethnic differences in preterm birth were also evident but were less pronounced than for low birth weight.

These new data start to fill an important gap in the routine birth data and add to what is already known about health inequalities in birth outcomes.