French Human Mortality Database

The French Human Mortality Database (FHMD) was created to provide detailed data to anyone interested in the history of human longevity in France. This project was carried out by Florian Bonnet, under the supervision of Hippolyte d'Albis and Magali Barbieri (researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and INED in Paris).

The French Human Mortality Database is a "satellite" of the Human Mortality Database (HMD), which currently holds many historical national lifetables. Consequently, the FHMD’s underlying methodology corresponds to the one used for the HMD. Some adjustments were made to adapt to the unique situation of some specific geographic units or periods of time.

The French Human Mortality Database uses data that is validated and corrected, when required, and made comparable, as much as possible, for the period ranging from 1901 to 2020. This database will be updated yearly to reflect the most recent local data.

The protocol used to compute regional lifetables was originally published in Demographic Research (Bonnet, F. (2020). Computations of French lifetables by department, 1901–2014. Demographic Research, 42, 741-762). A regularly updated article presents the most recent data available as well as changes in the methodological protocol used. You can find this document here. We thank users of the French Human Mortality Database to cite both papers as reference.

Finally, a tool for visualizing mortality data has been developed by Denys Dukhovnov, PhD student at the University of California at Berkeley. https://shiny.demog.berkeley.edu/hmd/FMDB_MapApp/.