The HMD data are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The HMD provides original estimates of exposure-to-risk, death rates, and life tables as well as the input data that have been used to produce these estimates. In addition, the HMD provides access to cause-specific data series. The data constructed by the HMD team are published under the CC BY 4.0 license. This is not the case for the input data (for all HMD data series) which remain under each provider's distribution license.
In all published work and presentations, please acknowledge the HMD as either the source or the intermediary provider of the data. When downloading data, note the date for future reference. When presenting and publishing the original HMD estimates of exposure-to-risk, all-cause and cause-specific death rates, or life tables, please use the following citation:
HMD. Human Mortality Database. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany), University of California, Berkeley (USA), and French Institute for Demographic Studies (France). Available at www.mortality.org.
You may also consider referring directly to the HCD or to the STMF data series as follows:
Human Cause of Deaths data series (HCD). Human Mortality Database. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany), University of California, Berkeley (USA), and French Institute for Demographic Studies (France). Available at www.mortality.org.
Short-Term Mortality Fluctuations data series (STMF). Human Mortality Database. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany), University of California, Berkeley (USA), and French Institute for Demographic Studies (France). Available at www.mortality.org.
Note that all original data published under “Input Data” on the country pages, whether for the all-cause or for the cause-specific series, should not be used for commercial gain or re-published in any form without the explicit permission of the data owners (usually national statistical offices).
The exact data sources used for each country are listed on the country page.
Since the HMD data are updated on a regular basis (including corrections as needed), the preferable option is not to pass a copy of these data to other users. Instead, refer them to the HMD website, where they may download the data for themselves. This practice helps to prevent multiple outdated or incorrect versions. It also ensures that each user has full access to the information regarding the source and processing of mortality estimates, citation procedures, and any other useful documentation.