International Human Mortality Database project: a strong partnership between INED, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, and the University of California at Berkeley

Magda Tomasini, Director of the National Institute for Demographic Studies or INED (France), Mikko Myrskylä, Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany), and the Department of Demography at the University of California at Berkeley (United States) have just signed their scientific cooperation agreement in connection with the Human Mortality Database project (HMD). Recognized worldwide as an essential source of mortality statistics for over 40 countries, HMD is composed of historical mortality series based on top quality methods and data.

The Human Mortality Database (HMD), a joint project of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the University of California, Berkeley, was established in 2002 to provide detailed mortality and population data to researchers, students, journalists, public decision makers, and anyone interested in the history of human longevity. It is made up of historical series of mortality rates by sex, age, and all other lifetable indicators, as well as all of the original data used to construct those series (deaths, births, and population counts). The HMD project covers several databases, including the main HMD (www.mortality.org) and the Human Life-Table Database (www.lifetable.de).

The newly signed partnership between INED, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, and the University of California, Berkeley introduces a new component that will strengthen scientific cooperation between researchers at these three institutions in their work on this international database. This is information on causes of death—an important change for the database’s users. Research based on these new data improves our understanding of the factors driving the extraordinary advance in human life spans over the past two centuries. INED will join the HMD project as a third partner contributing its internationally recognized experience in constructing long time series of mortality indicators by cause of death. 

The partnership has been signed for 5 years and will lead to the development of shared research projects, seminars and conferences, and facilitate the hosting of researchers for scientific exchanges. 

HMD data are available free of charge upon registration. To this day over 6,000 articles, book chapters, doctoral dissertations, and other documents have been published drawing on these data and a total of over 65,000 users have registered to the database.

More information on the Human Mortality Database (HMD) :

https://www.mortality.org/