Worklife Expectancy via Competing Risks/Multiple Decrement Theory with an Application to Railroad Workers

A key concept in economics, and arguably the key concept in forensic economics, worklife expectancy, has been treated by actuaries, demographers and forensic economists with different models. The Markov or multiple increment/multiple decrement model has been employed by all three groups, while multiple decrement theory represented an earlier approach and a special case. As discussed in Skoog-Cieka (2004), in some cases, e.g., railroad worker worklife expectancy hybrids of these two approaches may prove fruitful, given appropriate but only occasionally available data. This paper develops and extends these ideas to allow a look at worklife expectancy in occupations where actuarial data provides longitudinal records of transitions.