The Comparison of Life Table and Markov Chain Techniques for Follow-up Studies

We examine Markov chain versus life table techniques for comparing cohorts (homogeneous groups) with respect to time to occurrence of specified events. Key results are (i) a theorem showing that, when the underlying process is a stationary Markov chain, the Markov chain estimator of time to occurrence is equivalent to the life table estimator, and (ii) simulation statistics suggesting that the Markov chain estimator has a smaller standard error.