German SHARE 2.0 longitudinal survey

• Applicants: Dr. Michael Bergmann; Dr. Arne Bethmann; Professor Dr. David Richter
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine ; Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 549839254

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) has been established over the last 20 years as one of the most important European infrastructures at the interface between socio-economic and health research. It covers 27 European countries and Israel in biennial face-to-face surveys of the population aged 50 and over, with a total of about 600,000 interviews with 150,000 respondents collected to date. As the original timeframe of the project is coming to an end at the end of 2024, SHARE-ERIC, the institutional entity of SHARE at the European level, decided on 17 May 2022 to extend the project indefinitely, subject to regular evaluation. At the same time, SHARE-ERIC approved a new research agenda for this new SHARE 2.0. With this decision, SHARE 2.0 will set out to continue the legacy of the original SHARE as an ESFRI landmark and one of the core research infrastructures of the European Research Area. The purpose of this application is to provide funding for the German sub-study of SHARE 2.0. The revised SHARE-ERIC Statutes recognize that SHARE is an "interdisciplinary, international, and longitudinal survey with unprecedented quality regarding coherence, breadth and international comparability and is of great significance in many different fields of fundamental and applied sciences such as demography, economics, epidemiology, gerontology, biology, medicine, psychology, public health, health policy, sociology and statistics". They also state that SHARE provides an "up-to-date data infrastructure that monitors progress in health, economic, social and environmental policies on European and national levels" to enable evidence-based public policy making. While the international coordination of SHARE is mainly funded by the European Commission, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and contributions from the participating countries, the data collection in each country is mainly funded by national funding agencies. In this proposal, we therefore request funding for the first phase of a DFG long-term project to cover the costs of the German SHARE sub-study. The project consists of three closely interrelated areas. Firstly, it will fund and coordinate the German data collection and administration of the SHARE 2.0 project in close cooperation with the central coordination of SHARE, SHARE-ERIC and our national and European partners. Secondly, it will further develop the survey methodology used in the study by testing and implementing state-of-the-art methods and by contributing ist own research on innovative approaches. Thirdly, the project will build on the pioneering work of the original SHARE project in linking survey and administrative pension data by incorporating additional data sources. In these three areas, SHARE Germany will support the European SHARE effort by providing a development platform and expertise for the implementation of innovations in the broader SHARE context.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants