People from sexual minorities really do die younger, new data suggests
New data has revealed something the UK has never seen before: clear evidence that sexual minority people die earlier, and at higher rates, than their straight or heterosexual peers.
For the first time, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published overall mortality rates by sexual orientation in England and Wales. The findings come from a new bulletin that links voluntary sexual orientation data collected in the 2021 census with death registrations between March 2021 and November 2024. The linkage was possible for people with valid NHS identification numbers, allowing researchers to examine patterns of death across a population of nearly 29 million adults.
Evidence on whether sexual minority people experience higher overall mortality has been mixed, with many previous studies limited by small sample sizes, indirect measures of sexual orientation or a focus on specific causes of death rather than all-cause mortality. The new ONS analysis is the first UK study to link self-reported sexual orientation from the census with national death registrations, allowing population-level mortality rates to be examined across millions of people.
The headline result is difficult to ignore. People identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or another minority sexual orientation were 30% more likely to die from any cause during the study period than those identifying as straight or heterosexual. In age-standardised terms, this equates to 982.8 deaths per 100,000 people in the LGB+ group, compared with 752.6 per 100,000 among straight or heterosexual people.
Sexual orientation was included in the census for the first time in 2021. Around 92.5% of people aged 16 and over answered the question, representing roughly 44.9 million people.
Most respondents (89.4%) identified as straight or heterosexual, while 3.2% identified with an LGB+ orientation. A further 7.5% chose not to answer. After linking census responses to death records, the final ONS analysis covered just under 28.7 million people.
While this is the first UK release to examine all-cause mortality by sexual orientation, it builds on earlier ONS findings. In April 2025, the agency reported that people identifying as LGB+ had more than double the risk of suicide and two-and-a-half times the risk of intentional self-harm compared with straight or heterosexual people.
What the new data shows is that higher mortality among sexual minority people extends well beyond mental health.
Heart disease, for example, was the leading cause of death in both groups together and specifically in men (the leading cause of death in LGB+ women was intentional self-harm, and heart disease was the second leading cause). It accounted for 11.9% of deaths among LGB+ people and 10.7% among straight or heterosexual people.
This might not sound surprising until age is taken into account. On average, people in the LGB+ group were much younger, with a mean age of 35.6 years, compared with 48.6 years in the straight or heterosexual group.
Because the risk of ischaemic heart disease rises steeply with age, a higher share of deaths from this cause in a younger population is particularly troubling.
Read more: Sexual minority women face barriers to health care
The ONS does not attempt to explain why these differences exist, and the data alone cannot establish cause. But the broader evidence base offers important clues. Smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity and physical inactivity are all well-established risk factors for cardiovascular disease, and some are known to be more common among sexual minority populations.
Earlier ONS analysis has shown that lesbian, gay and bisexual people are more likely to smoke than heterosexual people, especially women, even after accounting for factors such as age, ethnicity and socioeconomic status.
Other research suggests higher rates of obesity among sexual minority women, though not consistently among men. Evidence for differences in conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes is more mixed.
Beyond individual behaviour, decades of research point to the health effects of minority stress on heart disease. Exposure to discrimination, stigma and violence is associated with higher levels of smoking and alcohol use, disrupted sleep, obesity and hypertension, all of which accumulate over time to increase the risk of serious illness and early death.
The most distressing findings in the new ONS release concern young people. Among those aged 16 to 24 who identified as LGB+, suicide accounted for 45.3% of all deaths. Among straight or heterosexual people of the same age, the figure was 26.6%.
Suicide is preventable, but it rarely has a single cause. What these findings make clear is that living in today’s society still places a heavier burden on sexual minority people, particularly the young. That burden shows up not only in mental health statistics, but in patterns of physical illness and early death.
If sexual minority young people were able to grow up in safer, more inclusive environments, these stark inequalities might not exist. The emerging evidence suggests they are not inevitable. They are shaped by social conditions and, at least in part, they can be changed.
Catherine Meads volunteers occasionally for the Liberal Democrat political party in the UK but is not a member.