Abstract
This paper introduces the ‘Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe’ (SHARE) to researchers on ageing. SHARE provides an infrastructure to help researchers better understand the individual and population ageing process: where we are, where we are heading to, and how we can influence the quality of life as we age, both as individuals and as societies. The baseline wave in 2004 provides data on the life circumstances of some 27,000 persons aged 50 and over in 11 European countries, ranging from Scandinavia across Western and Central Europe to the Mediterranean. SHARE has made great efforts to deliver truly comparable data, so we can reliably study how differences in cultures, living conditions and policy approaches shape the life of Europeans just before and after retirement. The paper first describes the SHARE data. In order to demonstrate its value, it then presents highlights from the three main research areas covered by SHARE, namely economics, sociology, and health.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Unfortunately, we cannot distinguish different kinds of voluntary work (e.g. coaching at a sports club, distributing food or clothes, serving in committees or boards) nor do we know how many hours a respondent has volunteered.
To ensure comparability with a large number of other surveys, SHARE contains two different versions of the self-reported health question. Both are 5-point scales. One ranges from ‘excellent’ to ‘poor’ (used, e.g. in the US Health and Retirement Survey), the other ranges from ‘very good’ to ‘very poor’ (used, e.g. by WHO in numerous studies). To ease the exposition, we concentrate on the former version.
The final release of the SHARE data will offer a second, complementary way to purge our data from cross-country reporting bias, so-called anchoring vignettes.
References
Aarts LJM, Burkhauser RV, de Jong PR (eds) (1996) Curing the Dutch disease. An international perspective on disability policy reform. Aldershot, Avebury
Anheier HK, Salamon LM (1999) Volunteering in cross-national perspective: initial comparisons. Law Contemp Probl 62:43–65
Bardage C, Plujim SMF, Pedersen NL, Deeg DJH, Jylhä M, Noale M, Blumstein T, Otero A (2005) Self-rated health among older adults: a cross-national comparison. Eur J Ageing 2:149–158
Bath PA, Deeg D (2005) Social engagement and health outcomes among older people: introduction to a special section. Eur J Ageing 2:24–30
Batljan I, Lagergren M (2005) Future demand for formal long-term care in Sweden. Eur J Ageing 2 (in press)
Börsch-Supan A (2001) Incentive effects of social security under an uncertain disability option. In: Wise DA (ed) Themes in the economics of aging. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 281–310
Börsch-Supan A (2004) Global aging: issues, answers, more questions. MEA discussion paper 55–2004, University of Mannheim
Börsch-Supan A, Jürges J (eds) (2005) The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe—methodology. Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, Mannheim. Available at http://www.share-project-org
Börsch-Supan A, Brugiavini A, Jürges H, Mackenbach J, Siegrist J, Weber G (eds) (2005) Health, ageing and retirement in Europe—first results from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, Mannheim. Available at http://www.share-project-org
Cutler DM, Richardson E (1997) Measuring the health of the U.S. population. Brookings papers on economic activity: microeconomics 1997:217–271
Dewey ME, Prince MJ (2005) Mental health. In: Börsch-Supan A et al (eds) Health, ageing and retirement in Europe—first results from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, Mannheim, pp 108–117
Gallagher SK (1994) Doing their share: comparing patterns of help given by older and younger adults. J Marriage Fam 56:567–578
Groot W (2000) Adaption and scale of reference bias in self-assessments of quality of life. J Health Econ 19:403–420
Gruber J (2000) Disability insurance and labor supply. J Polit Econ 108:1162–1183
Gruber JD, Wise DA (1999) Social security and retirement around the world. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Hayward MD, Zhang Z (2001) Demography of aging. In: Binstock RH, George LK (eds) Handbook of aging and the social sciences. 5th edn. Academic Press, San Diego, pp 69–85
Juster FT, Suzman R (1995) An overview of the Health and Retirement Study. J Hum Resour 30 (special issue):S7–S56
Klevmarken A, Hesselius P, Swensson B (2005) The SHARE sampling procedures and calibrated design weights. In: Börsch-Supan A, Jürges J (eds) (2005) The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe—methodology. Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, Mannheim, pp 28–69
Kohli M, Rein M, Guillemard A-M, van Gunsteren H (eds) (1991) Time for retirement: comparative studies of early exit from the labor force. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Marmot M, Banks J, Blundell R, Lessof C, Nazroo J (eds) (2003) Health, wealth, and lifestyles of the older population in England: the 2002 English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Institute for Fiscal Studies, London
O’Reilly P, Caro FG (1994) Productive aging: an overview of the literature. J Aging Stud 6:39–71
Sen A (2002) Health perception versus observation. Br Med J 324:860–861
WHO (2002) Active ageing: a policy framework. World Health Organization, Geneva
Acknowledgements
The work in this paper has been supported financially through the fifth framework programme under the project name of AMANDA (“Advanced Multidisciplinary Analysis of New Data on Ageing”, QLK6-CT-2002-002426). The paper uses data from the early release 0 of SHARE 2004. This release is preliminary and may contain errors that will be corrected in later releases. The SHARE data collection has been primarily funded by the European Commission through the fifth framework programme (project QLK6-CT-2001-00360 in the thematic programme Quality of Life). Additional funding came from the US National Institute on Aging (U01 AG09740-13S2, P01 AG005842, P01 AG08291, P30 AG12815, Y1-AG-4553-01, and OGHA 04-064). Data collection in Austria (through the Austrian Science Fund, FWF), Belgium (through the Belgian Science Policy Office), and Switzerland (through BBW/OFES/UFES) were nationally funded.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Börsch-Supan, A., Hank, K. & Jürges, H. A new comprehensive and international view on ageing: introducing the ‘Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe’. Eur J Ageing 2, 245–253 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-005-0014-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-005-0014-9