Mortality rates and self reported health: database analysis by English local authority area.

Mortality rates are commonly used as summary measures of current health status when comparing different populations. Their use in this way is often criticised, however, because mortality rates, though readily available and objective, are such an extreme measure of ill health. Surveys of self reported health, as an alternative approach to quantifying the health of a population, tend to be regarded as flawed because of their subjectivity. The UK census in 2001 included two measures of self reported health. We compared their values for each local authority area with the mortality rates for each area to find out whether mortality and self reported health are correlated.