readHMD: Download data from the Human Mortality Database (HMD)

Description

Obtain data from the Human Mortality Database (HMD) maintained at the University of California at Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. To use readHMD, you must first obtain a username and password from HMD and supply them as arguments to this function.

Usage

readHMD(username, password,
        country=c(AUS='Australia', AUT='Austria', BLR='Belarus',
                  BEL='Belgium', BGR='Bulgaria', CAN='Canada',
                  CHL='Chile', CZE='Czech Republic', DNK='Denmark',
                  EST='Estonia', FIN='Finland', FRA='France',
                  DEU='Germany', HUN='Hungary', ISL='Iceland',
                  IRL='Ireland', ISR='Israel', ITA='Italy',
                  JPN='Japan', LVA='Latvia', LTU='Lithuania',
                  LUX='Luxemburg', NDL='Netherlands', NZL='New Zealand',
                  NOR='Norway', POL='Poland', PRT='Portugal',
                  RUS='Russia', SVK='Slovakia', SVN='Slovenia',
                  ESP='Spain', SWE='Sweden', CHE='Switzerland',
                  TWN='Taiwan', GBR='U.K.', USA='U.S.A.',
                  UKR='Ukraine'),
        sex=c('m', 'f', 'b'), HMDurl='http://www.mortality.org/hmd',
        dataType = 'lt',
        ltCol=c('m', 'q', 'a', 'l', 'd', 'L', 'T', 'e'),
        cohper = c(coh='cohort', per='periodic'),
        ageInterval=c(1, 5), yearInterval=c(1, 5, 10),
        url, ...)

Arguments

username, password

user name and password for HMD.

country

country for which data are required. Must be one of the available options given with the "usage", specified either by the name of the 3-letter code.

sex

gender for which data are required (male, female or both), specified via a single letter.

HMDurl

character string giving the URL of HMD.

dataType

data type: 'lt' for 'life table'. If a different data type is required, you should go to the HMD web site, find the URL you want, and specify it directly via the url argument.

ltCol

life table column:

{ Central death rate between ages x and x+n } q{ Probability of death between ages x and x+n } a{ Average length of survival between ages x and x+n fo

Value

If url is provided or dataType != 'lt' or read.table fails, this returns a list with the following components:
URLthe URL that was used, being the argument url if provided or the url that was constructed after noting that it was missing.
getURLobject returned by getURL.
readLinesobject returned by readLines(getURL(...)).
read.tableobject returned by read.table(getURL(...)).
Otherwise, this returns a list with the following components:
xnumeric vector of ages
ymatrix of the data for each age-year combination
timenumeric vector of the years
xname"age"
ynamec(m='Mortality rate', q='Mortality probability', a='Survival time for mortalities', l='Number of survivors', d='Number of deaths', L='Person-years in interval', T='Person-years remaining', e='Life expectancy')[ltCol] = data type from the life table
classc('fts', 'fds')

item

cohper
ageInterval
yearInterval
url
...

code

getURL

source

Human Mortality Database. University of California, Berkeley (USA), and Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany). Available at www.mortality.org and www.humanmortality.de.

Details

To use this function, you need a username and password with HMD. As of 2012.07.28, the HMD access is free for individuals, but you must register with them. To start the registration process, go to http://www.mortality.org and click "New User" near the top in the left margin. Then click "New User" again to see the User Agreement. In all published work and presentations, please acknowledge the HMD as either the source or the intermediary of the data with the date on which you extracted the data. See http://www.mortality.org/mp/auth.pl for recommended citation formats. If you agree to comply with their User Agreement, click "I agree" at the bottom of that page. This will take you to another page where you can enter requested information about you including an email address to which your password will be mailed.

Examples

Run this code

user <- "your.email@wherever.org" # as registered with HMD.
pw <- "1234567890"
# password as provided in an email from HMD possibly changed by you.

country <- 'Sweden'
SwedeMatAll <- readHMD(user, pw, 'Sweden', sex='f')

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