The Human Mortality Database

The Human Mortality Database (HMD) was created to provide detailed mortality and population data to researchers, students, journalists, policy analysts, and others interested in the history of human longevity. The project began as an outgrowth of earlier projects in the Department of Demography at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany (see history). It is the work of two teams of researchers in the USA and Germany (see research teams), with the help of financial backers and scientific collaborators from around the world (see acknowledgements).

The main goal of the database is to document the longevity revolution of the modern era and to facilitate research into its causes and consequences. To that end, the guiding principles of the HMD include:

1. Comparability
2. Flexibility
3. Accessibility
4. Reproducibility

We seek to provide open, international access to these data. At present the database contains detailed data for a collection of 33 countries or areas. We plan to add several more countries to this collection over the next few years. However, this database will be limited to populations where death registration and census data are virtually complete, since this type of information is required by the uniform method followed in the HMD. As a result, the countries and areas included here are relatively wealthy and for the most part highly industrialized. In a companion project, we are also developing the Human Lifetable Database (HLD), which will hold life tables constructed by other individuals or institutions using a variety of techniques. For this reason, the HLD contains mortality estimates for some countries that could not be included in the HMD.

We have tried to provide complete documentation of the data available through this site. Start by reading an overview of how individual data sets are constructed. A complete description of the database and its methods is also available (see methods protocol). Documentation that is specific to an individual population (including data sources) is provided through links within each country section.

You are welcome to download and analyze any data provided here free of charge. However, before gaining full access to the database, you must become a registered user, which requires accepting our user agreement and answering just a few questions. After receiving this information, we will immediately send you a password and more information about how to use the database.

We are still actively developing this database. In addition to adding data for other countries, we are also developing an interactive web interface to give more options to database users. Although we have been very careful in assembling and manipulating the data presented here, it is possible that some errors remain, and we would appreciate your help in identifying any inaccuracies. If you have comments or questions, or have trouble accessing the database, please write to hmd@mortality.org.