A collection of population life tables covering a multitude of countries and many years. Most of the HLD life tables are life tables for national populations, which have been officially published by national statistical offices. Some of the HLD life tables refer to certain regional or ethnic sub-populations within countries. Parts of the HLD life tables are non-official life tables produced by researchers. Life tables describe the extent to which a generation of people (i.e. life table cohort) dies off with age. Life tables are the most ancient and important tool in demography. They are widely used for descriptive and analytical purposes in demography, public health, epidemiology, population geography, biology and many other branches of science. HLD includes the following types of data: * complete life tables in text format; * abridged life tables in text format; * references to statistical publications and other data sources; * scanned copies of the original life tables as they were published. Three scientific institutions are jointly developing the HLD: the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany, the Department of Demography at the University of California at Berkeley, USA and the Institut national d''��tudes d��mographiques (INED) in Paris, France. The MPIDR is responsible for maintaining the database.