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Download The Human Mortality Database (HMD)

Source: R/read-HMD.R
ReadHMD.Rd

Download detailed mortality and population data for different countries and regions in a single object from the Human Mortality Database.

Usage

ReadHMD(
  what,
  countries = NULL,
  interval = "1x1",
  username,
  password,
  save = FALSE,
  show = TRUE
)

Arguments

what

What type of data are you looking for? The following options might be available for some or all the countries and regions:

  • "births" – birth records (the 1-year product only; HMD does not publish births by 5-year age group or by multi-year periods);

  • "Dx_lexis" – deaths by Lexis triangles;

  • "Ex_lexis" – exposure-to-risk by Lexis triangles;

  • "population" – population size;

  • "Dx" – death counts;

  • "Ex" – exposure-to-risk;

  • "mx" – central death-rates;

  • "LT_f" – period life tables for females;

  • "LT_m" – period life tables for males;

  • "LT_t" – period life tables both sexes combined;

  • "e0" – period life expectancy at birth;

  • "Exc" – cohort exposures;

  • "mxc" – cohort death-rates;

  • "LT_fc" – cohort life tables for females;

  • "LT_mc" – cohort life tables for males;

  • "LT_tc" – cohort life tables both sexes combined;

  • "e0c" – cohort life expectancy at birth;

countries

Specify the country data you want to download by adding the HMD country code/s. Options: "AUS", "AUT", "BEL", "BGR", "BLR", "CAN", "CHL", "HRV", "HKG", "CHE", "CZE", "DEUTNP", "DEUTE", "DEUTW", "DNK", "ESP", "EST", "FIN", "FRATNP","FRACNP", "GRC", "HUN", "IRL", "ISL", "ISR", "ITA", "JPN", "KOR", "LTU", "LUX", "LVA", "NLD", "NOR", "NZL_NP", "NZL_MA","NZL_NM", "POL", "PRT", "RUS", "SVK", "SVN", "SWE", "TWN", "UKR", "GBR_NP","GBRTENW","GBRCENW","GBR_SCO", "GBR_NIR","USA". If NULL data for all the countries are downloaded at once;

interval

Datasets are given in various age and time formats based on which the records are aggregated. Interval options:

  • "1x1" – by age and year;

  • "1x5" – by age and 5-year time interval;

  • "1x10" – by age and 10-year time interval;

  • "5x1" – by 5-year age group and year;

  • "5x5" – by 5-year age group and 5-year time interval;

  • "5x10" –by 5-year age group and 10-year time interval.

username

Your HMD username. If you don't have one you can sign up for free on the Human Mortality Database website.

password

Your HMD password.

save

Do you want to save a copy of the dataset on your local machine? Logical. Default: FALSE.

show

Choose whether to display a progress bar. Logical. Default: TRUE.

Value

A ReadHMD object that contains:

input

List with the input values (except the password).

data

Data downloaded from HMD.

download.date

Time stamp.

years

Numerical vector with the years covered in the data.

ages

Numerical vector with ages covered in the data.

Details

The Human Mortality Database is the reference source of detailed national mortality and population data; see the project's own pages for its history and research teams. A free account (and acceptance of the user agreement) is required, and a dataset is only as detailed as the country publishes: not every what exists for every country.

The login is performed once per call and reused for every country, so a long countries vector costs one authentication. The password is never stored in the returned object; input carries everything else, for reproducibility.

Author

Marius D. Pascariu

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{


# Download demographic data for 3 countries in 1x1 format
age_int  <- 1  # age interval: 1,5
year_int <- 1  # year interval: 1,5,10
interval <- paste0(age_int, "x", year_int)  # --> 1x1
# And the 3 countries: Sweden Denmark and USA. We have to use the HMD codes
cntr  <- c('SWE', 'DNK', 'USA')

# Download death counts. We don't want to export data outside R.
HMD_Dx <- ReadHMD(what = "Dx",
                  countries = cntr,
                  interval  = interval,
                  username  = "user@email.com",
                  password  = "password",
                  save = FALSE)
HMD_Dx

# Download life tables for female population and export data.
LTF <- ReadHMD(what = "LT_f",
               countries = cntr,
               interval  = interval,
               username  = "user@email.com",
               password  = "password",
               save = TRUE)
LTF
} # }