Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

Updated on Nov 09, 2023

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The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a multidisciplinary and cross-national panel database of micro data on health, socio-economic status as well as social and family networks of more than 45,000 individuals aged 50 or over. As such, it responds to a Communication by the European Commission calling to "examine the possibility of establishing, in co-operation with Member States, a European Longitudinal Ageing Survey". By now SHARE has become a major pillar of the European Research Area and in 2008 was selected as one of the projects to be implemented in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).

Founded in 2002, SHARE is coordinated centrally at the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA), Max-Planck-Institute for Social Law and Social Policy by Axel Börsch-Supan with central tasks also in Italy and the Netherlands. It is a collaborative effort of more than 150 researchers worldwide organized in multidisciplinary national teams and cross-national working groups. A Scientific Monitoring Board composed of eminent international researchers and a network of advisors help to maintain and improve the project’s high scientific standards.

SHARE is harmonized with its role models and sister studies the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), and has the advantage of encompassing cross-national variation in public policy, culture and history across a variety of European countries. Its scientific power is based on its panel design that grasps the dynamic character of the ageing process. SHARE’s multi-disciplinary approach delivers a full picture of the ageing process. Procedural guidelines and programs ensure an ex-ante harmonized cross-national design. Data collected include health variables (e.g. self-reported health, health conditions, physical and cognitive functioning, health behaviour, use of health care facilities), biomarkers (e.g. grip strength, body-mass index, peak flow), psychological variables (e.g. psychological health, well-being, life satisfaction), economic variables (current work activity, job characteristics, opportunities to work past retirement age, sources and composition of current income, wealth and consumption, housing, education), and social support variables (e.g. assistance within families, transfers of incomes and assets, social networks, volunteer activities). In addition, the SHARE data base features anchoring vignettes from the COMPARE project and variables and indicators created by the AMANDA RTD-Project. The data are available to the entire research community free of charge.

Economic Situation, Income and Retirement

Analyses based on SHARE reveal enormous differences in income adequacy across Europe. Income is considered least adequate in the Eastern European countries Poland and the Czech Republic, in the Southern European countries Greece, Italy and Spain and in Israel. In these countries, more than 50 percent of all households report difficulties in making ends meet. Income is considered most adequate in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Here, less than 20 percent of the households find it difficult to get by.

Also employment and retirement patterns differ significantly between European countries. The percentage of the working population with work effort exceeding rewards is particularly high in Poland and Greece. Correspondingly, self-reported early retirement intentions are also above average. Contrary to these countries, quality of work in terms of an effort-reward balance is high on average in the Nordic countries, in the Netherlands and in Switzerland. These countries also have the lowest percentage of older workers seeking early retirement.

Family

Availability of kin support largely depends in general on geographic accessibility and social contact. The SHARE data confirm, on the one hand, the existence of longstanding regional patterns of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ family ties, while, on the other hand, they reveal many similarities across Europe. In all countries – and across all age groups – 85 percent of all parents have at least one child living at a distance of at most 25 km. Moreover, the share of parents with less than weekly contacts to a child is equally low (7%) in Sweden and in Spain.

These results provide no evidence to support the notion of a ‘decline’ of parent-child relations in ageing Europe at the beginning of the 21st century.

Health

SHARE data document a strong relationship between education and health among the older population. This holds not only on the individual level (better educated individuals are healthier than less educated) but also across European nations. Comparing average education and average health levels in SHARE countries reveals that in particular the East European and Mediterranean countries are characterized by low levels of education and health simultaneously. In contrast, populations in Northern European countries and Switzerland are both healthier and better educated than the average.

Waves of data collection

By now four waves have been arranged to collect information from people aged 50 and over in different European countries, funded by the European Commission (through the Framework programs 5,6 and 7), the US National Institute on Aging, and national sources, especially the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The current wave (Wave 4) was operated in 2010 and 2011. Further waves are being planned to take place on a biennial basis.

Wave 1 (2004)

Eleven European countries have contributed data to the 2004 SHARE baseline study. They constitute a balanced representation of the various regions in Europe, ranging from Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden) through Central Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands) to the Mediterranean (Spain, Italy and Greece). Israel joined the SHARE framework in late 2004, being the first country in the Middle East to initiate a systematic study of its aging population. The SHARE main questionnaire consisted of 20 modules on health, socio-economics and social networks. All data were collected by face-to-face, computer-aided personal interviews (CAPI), supplemented by a self-completion paper and pencil questionnaire.

Wave 2 (2006-07)

Two 'new' EU member states - the Czech Republic and Poland - as well as Ireland have joined SHARE in 2006 and participated in the second wave of data collection in 2006-07. In addition to the main questionnaire an ‘End of Life’ interview was conducted for family members of deceased respondents. Israel carried out its second wave in 2009-10.

Wave 3 / SHARELIFE (2008-09)

SHARELIFE is the third wave of data collection for SHARE, which focuses on people's life histories. 30,000 men and women across 13 European countries took part in this round of the survey. SHARELIFE links individual micro data over the respondents’ entire life with institutional macro data on the welfare state. It thereby allows assessing the full effect of welfare state interventions on the life of the individual. Changes in institutional settings that influence individual decisions are of specific interest to evaluate policies throughout Europe. The SHARELIFE questionnaire contains all important areas of the respondents’ lives, ranging from partners and children over housing and work history to detailed questions on health and health care. With this variety SHARELIFE constitutes a large interdisciplinary dataset for research in the fields of sociology, economics, gerontology, and demography. The SHARELIFE life history data can be linked to the first two waves of SHARE assessing the present living conditions of older Europeans.

Wave 4 (2010-11)

In the fourth wave which started in autumn 2010, Estonia, Hungary, Luxemburg, Portugal and Slovenia joined the SHARE survey. In the other European countries the national samples will be enlarged, and a new social network module was added to the main questionnaire. In the German study, three additional projects including innovative biomarkers (e.g. dried bloodspots), the linkage with the German pension data as well as nonresponse experiments will be implemented: The data of wave 4 will be available in November 2012.

Scientific Method Project in the German Part of the Study

Biomarker Project

SHARE collects physical measurement, like walking speed or grip strength since wave 1 in 2004. In a subsample of the fourth German wave use of innovative biomarkers was piloted. Measures included are height, waist circumference, and blood pressure. Additionally, SHARE Germany collected dried blood spots (DBS), which will be analyzed in a laboratory with regard to total cholesterol, long-term blood sugar, and inflammatory values. The researchers hope to improve the measurement of respondent’s health with the biomarker project. It is now possible to validate self-reported health and to study the amount and determinants of under- or overreporting. Furthermore, these biomarkers can help to understand the complex relationship between social status and health and allow to identify pre-disease pathways. SHARE plans to include biomarkers in more and more countries within the next waves.

Record Linkage Project

There is always a risk of respondents giving incomplete or inaccurate information in a survey. Administrative data on the other hand is ideally complete and accurate. Linking survey data with administrative data is therefore a way to combine the best of both worlds. It offers several benefits, like the possibility to validate survey data, the improvement of explanatory and dependent variables and the reduction of respondent’s burden when using this information to replace survey questions. The goal of the project is to link survey data of the German SHARE respondents with their administrative records held by the German Pension Fund (DRV). It is based on a direct linkage, meaning that data from exactly the same person is linked with respondents’ written consent, using their Social Security Number.

Non-Response-Project

Survey participation has been declining in Germany and Europe over the past decades. This may harm the reliability of the collected data because the non-participation may not be random. As a consequence, results drawn from these data may be biased since the sample may not be representative of the actual target population. The non-response project tries to approach this issue from both ends. First, the project will investigate how participation in face-to-face interviews can be increased, for example by measuring the effect of unconditional monetary incentives on the respondents’ willingness to participate. In addition, a group of interviewers will receive an additional day of interviewer training to test the effectiveness of training on response rates. Second, a doorstep non-response study will be conducted to quantify the potential non-response bias.

The SHARE-Study is not the only study engaging in suchlike fields of research - it has a number of sister studies all over the world dealing with these subjects like ageing, pensions, retirement and population aging in general. Analogue studies following the SHARE model are for instance "The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing” (TILDA), "The Longitudinal Aging Study in India” (LASI), "The Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement” (JSTAR), SHARE Israel, “The Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging” (KLoSA), “Chinese Health and Retirement Survey” (CHARLS) and “Mexican Health and Aging Study” (MHAS).

More details can be found in the SHARE brochure.