Developing Strategies for Deriving Small Population Mortality Rates. CCSR Working Paper

This working paper is intended as a resource for users intending to create small area and/or ethnic group mortality rates. It presents methods, data and various strategies for creating mortality rates for use in population projections and introduces the ways of modelling mortality rates, including literature from the actuarial field. The methods review includes mortality laws, or mathematical models, and splines. Examples are presented using data from the Bradford district and outlines data sources that could be used to assist in the creation of mortality rates for Bradford wards and/or ethnic groups (including country of birth (COB)). While no ethnic-specific age-specific mortality rates (ASMRs) are created, two strategies of using relational-type approaches are presented for the Bradford wards.