The Human Mortality Database
The The Human Mortality Database
(HMD) was created to provide detailed mortality and population data for
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. 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. At present the database contains detailed data for a collection
of 17 countries. The countries included here are relatively wealthy and
for the most part highly industrialized.
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The Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old Age Mortality at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
The Kannisto-Thatcher database on old age mortality (K-T database)
includes data on death counts and population counts classified by sex, age,
year of birth, and calendar year for more than 30 countries. This database
was established in order to estimate death rates at highest ages (above
age 80). The core set of data in the database was assembled, tested for quality,
and converted into cohort mortality histories by Väinö Kannisto, a former
United Nations advisor on demographic and social statistics. Comparable material
on England and Wales was made available by A. Roger Thatcher, the former
Director of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys and Registrar-General
of England and Wales. With research funding provided by the U.S. National
Institute on Aging and the Danish Research Councils, the Kannisto-Thatcher
database was computerized under the supervision of James W. Vaupel at the
Aging Research Unit of the Centre for Health and Social Policy at Odense University
Medical School in 1993. Currently, the database is maintained by the Max Planck
Institute for Demographic Research, Germany.
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