New Comprehensive and International View on Ageing: The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

Content This paper introduces the ‘Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe’ (SHARE). The 2004 baseline study collects data on the individual life circumstances of about 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. We present first results from the three main research areas covered by SHARE, namely economics, sociology, and health. 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.