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：在小型人口中，死亡人数异常波动。为了解决这个问题，人口学家提出了不同的方法，但这些方法之间的关系不清楚。我们的目标是提供指导。首先，我们回顾了最近用于死亡率表的人口学小区域方法。其次，我们使用模拟数据评估了三种方法学方法的表现，证明了在不同年龄和子群体/地区之间的表现有相当大的差异，并且这种表现可能取决于包括的人口学知识的选择。