Mortality patterns at a subnational level or across subpopulations are often used to examine the health of a population. In small populations, however, death counts are erratic. To deal with this problem, demographers have proposed different methods but it is unclear how these methods relate to each other. We aim to provide guidance. First, we review recent demographic small-area methods for mortality schedules. Second, we evaluate three methodological approaches using simulated data. We show that there is considerable variability in the performance across ages and subpopulations/regions and that this performance can depend on the choice of incorporated demographic knowledge.

翻译：次国家级或亚人群层面的死亡模式常被用于评估人口健康状况。然而，在较小规模人群中，死亡计数往往呈现不稳定性。为应对此问题，人口统计学家提出了多种方法，但这些方法之间的关联尚不明确。本研究旨在提供指导性建议。首先，我们回顾了近期用于死亡率表的人口统计小区域方法。其次，我们通过模拟数据对三种方法论路径进行了评估。研究结果表明，不同年龄层及亚人群/区域间的方法表现存在显著差异，且该表现可能取决于所纳入人口统计知识的选取。