The Human Mortality Database (HMD) is a joint initiative of the Department of Demographics at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany that provides detailed mortality and population data to researchers, students, journalists, policy analysts, and others interested in the history of human longevity. The key people involved are John R. Wilmoth (Director) from the University of California, Berkeley, Vladimir Shkolnikov (Co-Director) from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, and Magali Barbieri (Associate Director) from the University of California, Berkeley, and INED, Paris.
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Creation of the Berkeley Mortality Database, a precursor to the Human Mortality Database
In 1997, John R. Wilmoth at the Department of Demography in the University of California, Berkeley started work on a database titled the Berkeley Mortality Database (BMD) with a grant from the National Institute of Aging in the United States. The BMD included data across the entire age range, but was restricted to only four countries (France, Japan, Sweden, and the United States).
For the most part, the Berkeley Mortality Database is now superseded by the Human Mortality Database, but the BMD is still available online because some types of data available in the BMD have not been transferred to the HMD.
Creation and development of the Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old Age Mortality
The Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old Age Mortality (KTD) was founded in 1993 by Väinö Kannisto and Roger Thatcher with the support and collaboration of James Vaupel, Kirill Andreev, and many others. The KTD was first developed at Odense University Medical School in Denmark. Since 1996, it has been maintained and developed by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.
Unlike the BMD, the KTD focused only on mortality above the age of 80, but included 30 countries (compared to the BMD, that included data for only 4 countries).
Creation and development of the Human Mortality Database
HMD began in 2000 as a collaborative project of the Department of Demographics at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, with funding from the National Institute of Aging in the United States. It used data from the BMD (which had launched in 1997) and was also strongly influenced by the Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old Age Mortality. After about two years of development, the HMD was formally launched in May 2002. HMD inherited the coverage of all age groups from BMD and the coverage of a diverse range of countries from KTD, thus combining the best features of both databases.
The methods protocol of HMD has steadily evolved and was last updated on May 31, 2007.
Academic reception
HMD data has been cited in academic research in demographic research and other research that relies of demographic data. For instance, there has been considerable research on the biological and evolutionary factors determining mortality and the differences in mortality across human populations. The data has also been cited in research that attempts to build better predictive models of human mortality. It has also been cited in research on specific causes of mortality and research on the social and economic consequences of changes in mortality.
Media reception
HMD data has been cited in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs.