Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement

The objective of this project is to contribute towards a better understanding of the societal and individual aspects of ageing, one of the great challenges of the 21st century, and to support and evaluate public policy in this important area. Important knowledge and information gaps with respect to ageing exist in Austria, which can only be filled by comparative, multidisciplinary, and longitudinal data on households and individuals, observing them while they retire and age. To that end, we plan to participate in an ongoing project at the European level: the establishment of a longitudinal "Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe" (SHARE). The aim of this particular project is to design, implement, test and evaluate this survey. We will collect interdisciplinary (social, economic, psychological, health-related, financial) representative data on citizens over the age of 50. This survey will follow a common set-up across all participating countries with the goal of collecting data that are strictly comparable to allow cross-country research. A multidisciplinary team of researchers will collaborate in both the design of the survey instrument and the analysis of the outcomes. This preparatory phase is meant to be followed by an EU-financed full-fledged panel on ageing. The outcomes of the project, including the collected micro-data, will be made widely and freely available to the research community, subject to legal and confidentiality restrictions.

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement is a newly developed panel survey of European citizens above age 50. Its primary goal is to understand economic, social and health challenges of an ageing population in Europe. In a big interdisciplinary working group of more than 100 scientists we set out to construct a survey instrument from all these different perspectives with the purpose to ask European citizens above age 50 every other year. The SHARE project basically consists of the initial working phase to discuss and implement the first version of this survey in 11 European countries; in the meantime three more countries joined. The second survey, which will be asked to the very same persons, will go into the field in 2006/7. Only by closely observing changes and developments over time for the same persons can we learn, how individuals adapt to different economic, social and health circumstances - and how their social environment does cope with the problems these individuals face. Moreover, the comparison across countries offers a fruitful way to observe different institutional settings and compare the behaviour of individuals reacting upon them. The first survey was a big success, the general interdisciplinary methodology worked out very well; participation rates in the survey were high. More than 400 scientists from very different fields are using the data already. There are now guarantees by European Union bodies to fund several future waves of the panel. Preliminary results of the study concern cross-country comparisons of intergenerational financial transfers, early retirement, the prevalence of and reasons for voluntary work as well as disability and health issues in old age. It can be shown that Italy and Austria have the lowest retirement ages across Europe; these differences cannot be explained by different health or disability patterns. Other results concern the prevalence of private and firm pensions as a part of income support in old age: whereas in Sweden or the Netherlands two thirds of retirees have a firm pension at their disposal, the rates in central Europe are much lower.