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Roland Rau

Publications and source records attributed to Roland Rau.

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Evaluation of small-area estimation methods for mortality schedules

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.

stat.ME

Probabilistic Mortality Forecasting with Varying Age-Specific Survival Improvements

We propose a probabilistic mortality forecasting model that can be applied to derive forecasts for populations with regular and irregular mortality developments. Our model (1) uses rates of mortality improvement to model dynamic age patterns of mortality change and it can (2) optionally complement the mortality trend of a country of interest with that of at least one reference country. Retrospective mortality forecasts for British and Danish women from 1991 to 2011 suggest that our model can generate smaller forecast errors than other widely accepted approaches like, for instance, the Lee-Carter model or the UN Bayesian approach.

stat.AP