1. ELSA English Longitudinal Study of Ageing International Comparisons Carli Lessof National Centre for Social Research Introductory workshop to the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing 5 July 2005 Royal Statistical Society, London International Comparisons Carli Lessof National Centre for Social Research

2. ELSA English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Health and Retirement Survey Revised Health and Retirement Study - steady state design Combines AHEAD (70+ 1993/4), HRS (1992) with additional cohorts 22,000 individuals 1998, 2002, 2004 Oversamples of Hispanics, Blacks, and Florida residents Baseline (and newly added sub-samples): in-home, face-to-face Follow-up by telephone every 2 years, proxy interviews after death Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan Principal Investigator Robert J. Willis Funded by the National Institute on Aging http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/intro

3. ELSA English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging Principal Investigator Axel Boersch-Supan Eleven countries (soon to be twelve) Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden) Central (Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands) Mediterranean (Spain, Italy, Greece) Plus Israel 2004 baseline study Cross-national variation - public policy, culture and history

4. ELSA English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Sample and Response

5. ELSA English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Similar substantive content Some variation e.g. SHARE has more on services HRS and ELSA similar administrative data Other country specific studies e.g. Mexico, Canada

6. ELSA English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Comparative Projects and Concordance Amy Pienta at ICPSR (Michigan) International concordance database IFS/RAND Comparison of the health-wealth gradient across US and England Panos Demakakos (UCL) Comparison of psychosocial questions ELSA/HRS Iain Lang (Exeter) Comparison of health items Conference 26-28 September, Lund, Sweden