  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.
