A summary of social characteristics in all district health authorities in England has not been published before. The items presented here are about children, the elderly, housing, migration and economic factors, and include a selection of composite scores. Similar information about electoral wards may be used to identify the most deprived parts of a district. The district figures provide a simple means of comparing districts when the ward figures are too detailed for that purpose, and analyses of the data will become available through the service run by John Yates at the Health Services Management Centre, Birmingham.