Estimating the age-specific mortality pattern in limited populations of small areas

It is fairly well established that empirical mortality data sets are often characterized by a number of limitations and deficiencies, the most common of which is a pronounced tendency in age declaration to “round-off” to certain preferred digits. Another typical limitation of such data is that they are often provided only in aggregated forms or/and they suffer by incompleteness. Special problems related to the efficiency and stability of death rates also arise when data refer to limited population of small areas, where the age-specific death counts, as related to few events, are small. In such a case the age-specific death rates are inefficient estimators of the corresponding death probabilities as a result of highest impact of randomness. However, for many purposes in both demographic analysis and actuarial practice, there is a need for both reliable and analytical estimation of the age-specific mortality pattern. In this work these problems are discussed, and a technique for providing accurate and analytical estimates of the age-specific mortality pattern of small areas is proposed. For evaluation purposes this technique is applied to empirical data of a variety of European populations.