The GRIM books
The AIHW has compiled long-term mortality data on selected causes of death by age and sex for each year from the beginning of the 20th century, called the GRIM (General Record of Incidence of Mortality) books. They are interactive Excel workbooks updated annually containing comprehensive long-term mortality data on selected causes of death by age and sex for each year.
The GRIM books have been grouped together by chapters as adopted by the 10th Revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10). Each workbook contains mortality data, population data, derived data items (e.g. age-specific and age-standardised rates), summary measures (e.g. mean age at death, potential years of life lost, lifetime risk of dying), birth cohort information and graphs.
The workbooks have been set up to enable mortality data to be analysed over specific time periods. All workbooks contain the latest mortality data, (which currently is for the year 2006), although the initial year of data for each cause of death varies according to the availability.
The GRIM books are fully interactive, enabling users to set limits by age groups and years, and select population standards. Users can also generate, copy and print summary tables for summary measures such as average annual rates of change, aggregated age-specific rates, risk of dying and potential years of life lost.
The GRIM Books are currently available as:
- National books, containing data at the National level; and
- State/Territories (S&T) books, containing data at the State and Territory levels