Estimation under length-bias and right-censoring: an application to unemployment duration analysis for married women

In this work we analyse unemployment duration for married women in Spain, using the Labour Force Survey (LFS) of the Spanish Institute for Statistics, 1987-1997. Consistent non-parametric estimation of the unemployment survival function is provided. Since the available data are length- biased, a suitable correction of the Kaplan-Meier product-limit estimator is motivated and used for the referred analysis. The accuracy of parametric models is checked by means of goodness-of-fit plots--a graphical tool that requires preliminary estimation of the survival. Structural features of the associated hazard (as monotonicity and unimodality) are explored.