Errata

In response to a comment made by one of the anonymous reviewers of our article “Retrospective Information on Health Status and Its Application for Population Health Measures” (Molla and Lubitz, Demography, Vol 45, No. 1), we provided an illustrative example of mutually exclusive pathways and probabilities of health transitions on page 117, paragraph 3, followed by an equation. However, the last two sentences of the paragraph were not clearly stated. The ambiguities in the two sentences also lead to an erroneous specification of Eq. (4) given at the end of the paragraph. The two sentences and the equation in the article should read as follows:

The probability of being in Health State 1 at age (x), State 3 at age (x + 1), and dying before age (x + 2) is simply P₁₃P₃₄. The probability of ending up in fair/poor state of health at age (x + 2), given that the person was in an excellent/very good health state at age (x), and assuming a baseline interview and two subsequent interviews at an interval of one year each is given by Eq. (4):

$$[P_{11}\times P_{13}]+[P_{12}\times P_{23}]+[P_{13}\times P_{33}].$$ (4)

Also, assuming the matrix P is defined as stated in Eq. (2), P² is given by the following 4 × 4 matrix:

$$\left[\begin{array}{cccc}{p}_{11}^2+p_{12}{p}_{21}+p_{13}{p}_{31}& p_{11}{p}_{12}+p_{12}{p}_{22}+p_{13}{p}_{32}& p_{11}{p}_{13}+p_{12}{p}_{23}+p_{13}{p}_{33}& p_{11}{p}_{14}+p_{12}{p}_{24}+p_{13}{p}_{34}+p_{14}\\ p_{21}{p}_{11}+p_{22}{p}_{21}+p_{23}{p}_{31}& p_{21}{p}_{12}+p_{22}^2+P_{23}{P}_{32}& P_{21}{P}_{13}+P_{22}{P}_{23}+P_{23}{P}_{33}& P_{21}{P}_{14}+P_{22}{P}_{24}+P_{23}{P}_{24}+P_{24}\\ P_{31}{P}_{11}+P_{32}{P}_{21}+P_{33}{P}_{31}& P_{31}{P}_{12}+P_{32}{P}_{22}+P_{33}{P}_{32}& P_{31}{P}_{13}+P_{32}{P}_{23}+P_{33}^2& P_{31}{P}_{14}+P_{32}{P}_{24}+P_{33}{P}_{34}+P_{34}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right].$$