SHARE (Data on health and retirement in Europe)
The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a cross-national panel database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks of more than 45,000 individuals aged 50 and over.
SHARE is coördinated by the Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (MEA) and is harmonised with the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) .
Eleven countries contributed data to the SHARE baseline study (2004): Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Further data were collected in 2005-06 in Israel. The Czech Republic, Ireland and Poland participated in the second wave of data collection in 2006-07.
Data include health variables, bio-markers, psychological variables, economic variables and social support variables.
Data collection began in 2004. Read the May 2011 release guide at this link .
The SHARE database features anchoring 'vignettes' from the COMPARE project and variables and indicators created by the AMANDA RTD-Project. For methodological details see Boersch-Supan and Juerges (2005) .
The SHARE brochure is available at this link .
Access procedures are described at the 'Research Data Center' link on the SHARE web site . The descriptions above – and procedures below – are from the SHARE site.
SHARE data are distributed through CentERdata at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. The SHARE research data center complies with the Criteria of the German Council for Social and Economic Data (document in German language) for providing access to micro data.
Data may be downloaded from the SHARE Research Data Center under the following conditions:
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Users have to sign a statement confirming that under no circumstances the data will be used for other than purely scientific purposes. In case of doubt whether or not the data will be used for purely scientific research, the principal investigator of SHARE (Axel Börsch-Supan) will decide if a password will be granted. Data will only be made available after these documents have been received, by mail or fax (care of Josette Janssen; address: CentERdata, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands; e-mail: jjanssen@uvt.nl ; fax: +31 13 4662764). The required forms can be downloaded from this website . Upon request a copy by fax can be sent. Upon receipt of the signed statements you will receive a username and password enabling you to download the data. SHARE users have to register only once. Registration is free of charge. The original login code and password stay valid for all subsequent releases of the data.
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Users are requested to provide references to all papers based on the SHARE data to the SHARE co-ordination team. Whenever a paper is being written using SHARE data, a disclaimer and an acknowledgement should be included in the following form:
"This paper uses data from SHARE release 2.3.0, as of November 13th 2009. SHARE data collection in 2004-2007 was primarily funded by the European Commission through its 5th and 6th framework programmes (project numbers QLK6-CT-2001- 00360; RII-CT- 2006-062193; CIT5-CT-2005-028857). Additional funding by the US National Institute on Aging (grant numbers U01 AG09740-13S2; P01 AG005842; P01 AG08291; P30 AG12815; Y1-AG-4553-01; OGHA 04-064; R21 AG025169) as well as by various national sources is gratefully acknowledged [see this page for a list of funding institutions ]."
When new releases become available the same disclaimer and acknowledgement apply, except for a new reference to the release number and date.
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Data users should not make copies of the data available to others. Anyone wanting to use the data must contact CentERdata directly to request a copy of the data free of charge. An exception is the use of SHARE data for teaching purposes. Registered users who want to make SHARE data available to undergraduate students may do so without special permission. However, doctoral students who want to use SHARE data for their own research should register.
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Registered users of the data will be included in the list of users of the SHARE project.
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In case of doubt whether or not the data have been used for purely scientific research, the Coordinator of SHARE will decide whether the password will be removed and legal action will be taken.
Contact: Thomas Bourke at econlibrary@eui.eu