(1) Self-rated health
That is to say, when a supervisor evaluates a person's health status, he generally divides the health status into five categories: very good, very good, good, average and poor, or very good, good, average, poor and very poor. The advantage of this method is that the data is easy to obtain, which is highly related to the actual health status of individuals. The disadvantage is that it is easily influenced by individuals and the comparability between different individuals is poor.
(2) Activities of daily life
ADL, that is, self-care ability in daily life, reflects the mastery of basic skills and techniques in daily life. The method of obtaining this kind of data is generally through subjective evaluation. Based on the evaluation results of the following items, the self-care ability of daily life is divided into five categories: complete independence, mild dependence, moderate dependence, heavy dependence and complete dependence. The evaluation items include diet, bathing, grooming (washing face, grooming, brushing teeth, shaving), dressing (including tying shoelaces), defecation control, urine control, going to the toilet, shifting bed chairs, walking 45 meters on the ground, and going up and down stairs.
Objective method:
(1) Measure height, weight and body mass index.
According to the anthropometric index theory, there is an inherent physiological and biological mechanism relationship between childhood and the future development of physical and cognitive functions, and the development of physical and cognitive functions is considered as an important determinant of personal economic potential.
(2) Mortality rate
Because for individuals, life and death are either one or the other, so it can not be used for individual level research. Mortality is usually used to study international macroeconomic indicators, such as economic growth and per capita income of the general population.
(3) Incidence rate
In this type, the specific diseases and symptoms recorded in medical diagnosis are the most common variables in such indicators.
(4) Nutrition intake
Because of the relationship between nutritional intake and health, there are also a lot of empirical studies that use a series of nutritional intake such as protein, iron, other major vitamins and calorie supplements to measure health.
Related literature, such as Liu Guoen et al. (2004) "China's healthy human capital and income growth" and Zhong Wei's paper "The relationship between health and non-agricultural employment" (2003), describe other indicators in detail.