Calculates age in years based on a reference date, which is the sytem date at default.

age(x, reference = Sys.Date(), exact = FALSE, na.rm = FALSE)

Arguments

x

date(s), will be coerced with as.POSIXlt()

reference

reference date(s) (defaults to today), will be coerced with as.POSIXlt() and cannot be lower than x

exact

a logical to indicate whether age calculation should be exact, i.e. with decimals. It divides the number of days of year-to-date (YTD) of x by the number of days in the year of reference (either 365 or 366).

na.rm

a logical to indicate whether missing values should be removed

Value

An integer (no decimals) if exact = FALSE, a double (with decimals) otherwise

Stable lifecycle


The lifecycle of this function is stable. In a stable function, we are largely happy with the unlying code, and major changes are unlikely. This means that the unlying code will generally evolve by adding new arguments; we will avoid removing arguments or changing the meaning of existing arguments.

If the unlying code needs breaking changes, they will occur gradually. To begin with, the function or argument will be deprecated; it will continue to work but will emit an message informing you of the change. Next, typically after at least one newly released version on CRAN, the message will be transformed to an error.

Read more on our website!

On our website https://msberends.gitlab.io/AMR you can find a comprehensive tutorial about how to conduct AMR analysis, the complete documentation of all functions (which reads a lot easier than here in R) and an example analysis using WHONET data.

See also

To split ages into groups, use the age_groups() function.

Examples

# 10 random birth dates
df <- data.frame(birth_date = Sys.Date() - runif(10) * 25000)
# add ages
df$age <- age(df$birth_date)
# add exact ages
df$age_exact <- age(df$birth_date, exact = TRUE)

df