Competing Hazards with Shared Unmeasured Risk Factors

"The present paper develops a generalization of the standard discrete-time competing hazards model that allows for the types of stochastic dependencies resulting from shared unmeasured risk factors. An empirical example is provided using the process by which young women form their first conjugal residential union, with married and unmarried cohabitation representing the competing alternatives. The results suggest considerable and significant similarity of the alternatives in terms of the unmeasurables. It is also shown that, as a result, the independence assumption leads to substantially biased estimates of the net marriage and net cohabitation survival functions." The data concern a cohort of white children born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1961 and their mothers, followed up to 1985.