Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)

How do people in the European Union age?
Answering this question is one of the major aims of the MEA-co-ordinated international survey project 50plus in Europe.

Eleven countries contributed representative data on Europe’s 50plus population when the SHARE www.share-project.org baseline study first took place in 2004.

The second wave of data collection took place between autumn 2006 and spring 2007. During this period 30,000 people form 14 European countries and Israel were interviewed.

SHARELIFE, www.sharelife-project.org, the survey’s third wave collected detailed retrospective life-histories in 15 countries in 2008 and 2009.

Interviewing 30,000 respondents in intervals of two years enables scientists to observe changes in the economic, health and social situations of older people in Europe. This provides scientists with the opportunity to determine how important events in the life time cycle, e.g. retirement or becoming a widow or widower, or changes of the institutional settings (e.g. in the health or retirement system) affect the quality of life of older Europeans.

Please refer to www.share-project.org for more detailed information in English and to http://www.share-project.org/t3/share/index.php?id=23 for more detailed information in German.