A Quantitative Method for Estimating the Human Development Stages by Based on the Health State Function Theory and the Resulting Deterioration Process

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantitative approach using the Health State Function theory to estimate human development stages and deterioration processes across different age groups, supported by theoretical and applied validation.

Contribution

It presents a novel theoretical method for quantitatively estimating human development stages based on health deterioration, integrating exit time theory and health state functions.

Findings

Quantitative estimates of development stages across age groups.

Correlation between deterioration speed and age-related health decline.

Validation using health data from WHO and HMD.

Abstract

The Health State Function theory is applied to find a quantitative estimate of the Human Development Stages by defining and calculating the specific age groups and subgroups. Early and late adolescence stages, first, second and third stages of adult development are estimated along with the early, middle and old age groups and subgroups. We briefly present the first exit time theory used to find the health state function of a population and then we give the details of the new theoretical approach with the appropriate applications to support and validate the theoretical assumptions. Our approach is useful for people working in several scientific fields and especially in medicine, biology, anthropology, psychology, gerontology, probability and statistics. The results are connected with the speed and acceleration of the deterioration of the human organism during age as a consequence of the changes in the first, second and third differences of the Health State Function and of the Deterioration Function. Keywords: Human development stages, Deterioration, Deterioration function, Human Mortality Database, HMD, World Health Organization, WHO, Quantitative methods, Health State Function, Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, Piaget method, Sullivan method, Disability stages, Light disability, Moderate disability, Severe disability stage, Old ages, Critical ages.