Data Sets on Pensions and Health: Data Collection and Sharing for Policy Design

Abstract

A growing number of countries are developing or reforming pension and health policies in response to population ageing and to enhance the welfare of their citizens. The adoption of different policies by different countries has resulted in several natural experiments. These offer unusual opportunities to examine the effects of varying policies on health and retirement, individual and family behaviour, and well-being. Realizing these opportunities requires harmonized data-collection efforts. An increasing number of countries have agreed to provide data harmonized with the Health and Retirement Study in the United States. This article discusses these data sets, including their key parameters of pension and health status, research designs, samples, and response rates. It also discusses the opportunities they offer for cross-national studies and their implications for policy evaluation and development.

A Research Note on Challenges of Cross-National Aging Research: An Example of Productive Activities Across Three Countries

“…In this study, we used country-specific data to make comparisons. We believe that using this approach has potential because nationally representative data sets are now being collected in many countries (Lee, 2010). Although this type of cross-national work relies much more on data management to create comparable data for analyses, this approach has been increasingly applied in recent years.…”

“…For example, Kim, Sargent-Cox, French, Kendig, and Anstey (2012) used data from Australia, United States, and Korea to investigate the relationship between wealth and well-being; and Di Gessa and Grundy (2017) examined the association between paid work and later life engagement using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and England. Further, researchers from RAND Corporation have taken a lead in providing a user-friendly platform for researchers to study global aging by harmonizing data across countries (Lee, 2010). They also provide guidance on a range of topics, with a focus on the health and retirement issues.…”