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Abstract

We construct a unified objective measure of health status: the frailty index, defined as the cumulative sum of all adverse health indicators observed for an individual. Using the frailty index, we document four stylized facts on health dynamics over the life cycle. We show that the facts are robust to several alternative approaches to the construction of the index. We also compare the frailty index with selfreported health status and find significant differences in their dynamics and ability to predict health-related outcomes. Finally, we propose and estimate a stochastic process for frailty dynamics over the life cycle accounting for mortality bias. Researchers can use our frailty measure and dynamic process to study the evolution of health over the life cycle and its economic implications.