Julie M. Korbmacher

Data Resource Profile: The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)

SHARE is a unique panel database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks covering most of the European Union and Israel. To date, SHARE has collected three panel waves (2004, 2006, 2010) of current living circumstances and retrospective life histories (2008, SHARELIFE); 6 additional waves are planned until 2024. The more than 150 000 interviews give a broad picture of life after the age of 50 years, measuring physical and mental health, economic and non-economic activities, income and wealth, transfers of time and money within and outside the family as well as life satisfaction and well-being. The data are available to the scientific community free of charge at www.share-project.org after registration. SHARE is harmonized with the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and has become a role model for several ageing surveys worldwide. SHAREs scientific power is based on its panel design that grasps the dynamic character of the ageing process, its multidisciplinary approach that delivers the full picture of individual and societal ageing, and its cross-nationally ex-ante harmonized design that permits international comparisons of health, economic and social outcomes in Europe and the USA.

Measuring Interviewer Characteristics Pertinent to Social Surveys: A Conceptual Framework

Interviewer effects are found across all types of interviewer-mediated surveys crossing disciplines and countries. While studies describing interviewer effects are manifold, identifying characteristics explaining these effects has proven difficult due to a lack of data on the interviewers. This paper proposes a conceptual framework of interviewer characteristics for explaining interviewer effects and its operationalization in an interviewer questionnaire. The framework encompasses four dimensions of interviewer characteristics: interviewer attitudes, interviewers’ own behaviour, interviewers’ experience with measurements, and interviewers’ expectations. Our analyses of the data collected from interviewers working on the fourth wave of SHARE Germany show that the above measures distinguish well between interviewers.

Linking Survey Data to Administrative Records in a Comparative Survey Context

Linking survey data to external databases that contain records pertaining to the same respondents holds substantial promise for survey researchers. There are a number of methodological challenges with generating the links between the data sources, but there may also be administrative challenges in linking the datasets. This issue becomes particularly important when conducting cross-national research where research standards and requirements may vary substantially across countries. This chapter provides an overview of process of linking in a comparative context and highlights several issues that researchers are likely to encounter when conducting this type of work.

Elternschaft und Renteneintritt

Aus Basis von retrospektiv erhobenen Daten des SHARELIFE-Projektes wird im vorliegenden Beitrag der Zusammenhang von Elternschaft und Renteneintritt in 13 kontinentaleuropaischen Landern untersucht. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse zeigen, dass (mehr) Kinder tendenziell zu einem spateren Renteneintritt bei Mannern fuhren, die bis in spate Erwerbsphasen eine Versorgerrolle ubernehmen. Bei Frauen zeigen sich deutlich Kohortenunterschiede: vor 1940 geborene Mutter scheiden im Vergleich zu Kinderlosen spater aus dem Erwerbsleben aus, wahrend nach 1940 Geborene fruher in den Ruhestand eintreten. Diese Befunde werden als Folge wohlfahrtsstaatlicher Arrangements diskutiert, die unterschiedliche Moglichkeiten und Anreize fur die Erwerbstatigkeit junger Mutter bzw. den Renteneintritt alterer Frauen setzen.

Reproductive History and Retirement: Gender Differences and Variations Across Welfare States

The association between women’s fertility and employment has received considerable attention in the social science literature, which documents significant variation in the observed correlations across time and between welfare states (Ahn and Mira 2002). Moreover, the employment–fertility nexus has been shown to vary by gender: mothers might suffer from limited opportunities for paid employment under the same institutional regime that allows for positive income effects of fatherhood, for example.