Infrastructure and User Services
SHARE, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, is a research infrastructure for studying the effects of health, social, economic and environmental policies over the life-course of European citizens and beyond. The Netherlands is one of the 28 participating European countries. Every participating SHARE country has a country team located e.g. at a university in the respective country. For the Netherlands, the country team is based at Utrecht University. The country teams present SHARE on a national level and take care of all national SHARE activities. As in other countries, every 2 years adults over 50 years of age are interviewed face-to-face and physical measurements are collected. SHARE data are available to the scientific community free of charge after registration. SHARE data from the Netherlands can be linked to the registry data of Statistics Netherlands (CBS).
Examples/description of the type of research
To date, SHARE has collected nine panel waves between 2004 and 2022 of current living circumstances, two waves of retrospective life histories (SHARELIFE) in 2008 and 2017, two SHARE Corona surveys, and one survey on the cognitive status of the SHARE respondents, using the internationally harmonized cognitive assessment protocol (HCAP). The collected data serve the research community for quantitative research.
SHARE in the future will focus on four research areas, covering (a) the retirement of the baby-boomers and its relation to the Silver Economy and digitalization, (b) health prevention and maintenance in an ageing world threatened by new infections and chronic diseases, (c) flexible old-age care, as well as (d) rising inequality in income, wealth, and health.
How to access the infrastructure?
Access to the SHARE data is provided free of charge on the basis of a release policy that gives quick and convenient access to all scientific users world-wide after individual registration.
If users wish to use linked data from the registry of Statistics Netherlands there are additional checks and fees involved.
