Overview
SHARE (Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe www.share-project.org) is a pan-European longitudinal survey of the elderly (50+) population, which focuses on the study of the course of the individual aging process and the causal relationships that influence it, on the one hand, and is, on the other hand, an important source for both monitoring existing policy measures and the science-based initiation of new measures.
The panel waves of the SHARE survey have taken place since 2004 in 2-year increments. The SHARE methodology is designed to be comparable with the similar survey HRS (Heat and Retirement Survey, waves since 1992) in the USA, and in England in 2002. with the ongoing ELSA survey (English Longitudinal Survey on Aging).
Internationally, the European program is coordinated by the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.