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"How Fast Do Old Men Slow Down?"
The Review of Economics and
Statistics, February 1994, 103-118.
pdf file (1,305KB).
Abstract
An important question in the study of aging concerns the rate at which
people physically deteriorate with age. How much, for example, can be
physically expected of, say, a healthy, non-injured 75-year-old man or
woman relative to what he or she could do at age 45? This paper applies
econometric techniques to data on men's track and field and road racing
records by age to estimate the rate at which men slow down with age.
Eight track, eight field, and eleven road racing events are considered.
The main econometric technique used is a combination of the
polynomial-spline method and the frontier-function method. A number of
the events have been pooled to provide more efficient estimates.
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