Estimating time to pregnancy from current durations in a cross.sectional sample

A new design for estimating the distribution of time to pregnancy is proposed and investigated.The design is based on recording current durations in a cross.sectional sample of women, leading to statistical problems similar to estimating renewal time distributions from backward recurrence times.Non.parametric estimation is studied in some detail and a parametric approach is indicated.The results are illustrated on Monte Carlo simulations and on data from a recent European collaborative study.The role and applicability of this approach is discussed.