SHARE LIFE – A Life-Course Perspective on Ageing Research in Europe

SHARE LIFE is the retrospective life-history module of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). It provides harmonised information on individual life courses from childhood to adulthood, enabling researchers to examine how early-life conditions could influence health, employment, and quality of life at older ages, and to analyse ageing from a life-course perspective.

SHARE LIFE is not conducted in every SHARE wave but is implemented as a dedicated module at specific stages of the study. In Latvia, SHARE LIFE was carried out in Wave 7, coinciding with the country’s entry into the SHARE study. The retrospective life-history data complement the longitudinal information collected in the regular SHARE waves on respondents’ current circumstances.

The SHARE LIFE module covers a broad range of domains, including childhood living conditions, education, employment and career histories, partnership and family trajectories, migration, as well as major life events such as health episodes or economic shocks. This comprehensive approach allows the study of how social and economic inequalities develop and accumulate over the life course.

A key contribution of SHARE LIFE is its potential to support analyses of long-term processes and causal pathways, for example, the association between socio-economic conditions in childhood and health, labour market outcomes, and social protection in later life. These data provide an important empirical basis for research and for evidence-informed policymaking in the areas of education, health, employment, and social policy.

Overall, SHARE LIFE enhances the analytical value of the SHARE infrastructure by linking life-history information with longitudinal data, thereby contributing to a better understanding of ageing processes in Europe.

Information on the questionnaire modules included in the Latvian survey, including SHARE LIFE, is available here.

Access to SHARE data for scientific use is free of charge, in accordance with European Union and national data protection laws, as well as publicly available terms of use. More information is available here.

You can follow project news and updates on the SHARE Latvia Facebook page.

Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) participates in the project “RSU Participation in the Horizon Europe Programme” (Project No. 1.1.1.5/3/25/I/014), one of the goals of which is to inform and educate researchers about opportunities to use SHARE data in research.