SHARE – a longitudinal study of health, ageing and retirement in Europe

Abstract:

Demographic ageing is one of the biggest challenges many countries worldwide are facing. In order to better understand this process, the SHARE study – Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe was launched in 2004 at the initiative of the European Commission. This study represents a "natural laboratory" to explore the demographic ageing process, where multidisciplinary data on the lives of people aged 50 and over and their partners are collected across Europe longitudinally. This multidisciplinary and transnational micro database on health, socioeconomic status, and social and family networks contains information on more than 140,000 people aged 50 and more from 28 European countries and Israel. SHARE represents the most important data infrastructure in the field of social sciences, and the data from the study is a valuable resource for a wide range of analyses of policies.

Key words:
demographic ageing; health; panel–microdata; population 50+; retirement; SHARE study