Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Gateway to Global Aging Data (G2G) is a platform for population survey data on aging around the world. The goal of this project, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, is to facilitate cross-national comparative studies on aging using a family of health and retirement studies around the world.  It includes:

• the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)
• the Mexican Health and Ageing Study (MHAS)
• the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA)
• Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)
• Korean Longitudinal Study on Aging (KLoSA)
• Japanese Study on Aging and Retirement (JSTAR)
• Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS)
• China Health, Aging, and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS)
• Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA)
• Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE)
• Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI) 

Core content of these surveys include:

• Health, cognition, diseases, emotion, injury, physical functioning, physical measures, health behaviors
• Health insurance, health services utilization, health care expenditure, out-of-pocket spending
• Labor force, employment status/history, earnings, disability, retirement, work characteristics, pensions
• Economic Status, income, wealth, consumption, earnings, government transfers, housing, financial and non-financial assets
• Family structure, social network, family demographics, family exchange, family support, marriage, social participation

For each survey, we provide metadata on:

• The content and flow of the questionnaire,
• How and when, and by whom, a particular set of data was collected,
• How those data are formatted, and
• Search engine enabling the comparison of cross-wave, cross-survey concordance

G2G offer the following Harmonized data files with a set of identically defined variables on demographics, health and health behavior, financial and housing wealth, income, family, and employment and retirement, for cross-country analysis:

• RAND Health and Retirement Study (RAND HRS)
• Harmonized English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (Harmonized ELSA)
• Harmonized Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (Harmonized SHARE)
• Harmonized Korean Longitudinal Study on Aging (Harmonized KLoSA)
• Harmonized Japanese Study on Aging and Retirement (Harmonized JSTAR)
• Harmonized China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (Harmonized CHARLS)
• Harmonized Longitudinal Aging Study in India (Harmonized LASI)
• Harmonized Mexican Health and Aging Study (Harmonized MHAS)
• Harmonized Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (Harmonized TILDA)

G2G also provide interactive graphs and tables as a quick way to examine selected variables and compare the characteristics of older populations in more than 25 countries without downloading any micro data, as well as the publications from these population surveys around the world. G2G is located at g2aging.org.