The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a multidisciplinary and cross-national panel database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks of more than 30,000 individuals aged 50 or over. Eleven countries have contributed data to the 2004 SHARE baseline study. They are a balanced representation of the various regions in Europe, ranging from Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden) through Central Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands) to the Mediterranean (Spain, Italy and Greece). Further data have been collected in 2005-06 in Israel. Two 'new' EU member states - the Czech Republic and Poland - as well as Ireland have joined SHARE in 2006 and participated in the second wave of data collection in 2006-07. The survey’s third wave of data collection, SHARELIFE in 2008-09, will collect detailed retrospective life-histories in sixteen countries, with Slovenia joining in as a new member.
The data are available to the entire research community for no costs via de SHARE website.