It is a collaborative effort of more than 150 researchers worldwide who are organized in multidisciplinary national teams and cross-national working groups.

SHARE data collection is based on computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) complemented by measurements as well as paper-and-pencil questionnaires.

The data collected by SHARE provide a detailed insight into the financial situation of households of elderly Europeans.

In contrast, work quality in regard to the balance between performance and wage is high in the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

[6] These results provide no evidence to support the notion of a ‘decline’ of parent-child relations in ageing Europe at the beginning of the 21st century.

Israel joined the SHARE framework in late 2004, being the first country in the Middle East to initiate a systematic study of its aging population.

[9] All data were collected by face-to-face, computer-aided personal interviews (CAPI), supplemented by a self-completion paper and pencil questionnaire.

[10] Two 'new' EU member states - the Czech Republic and Poland - as well as Ireland joined SHARE in 2006 and participated in the second wave of data collection in 2006–07.

In addition to the main questionnaire an ‘End of Life’ interview was conducted for family members of deceased respondents.

[13] With this variety SHARELIFE constitutes a large interdisciplinary dataset for research in the fields of sociology, economics, gerontology, and demography.

The SHARELIFE life history data can be linked to the first two waves of SHARE assessing the present living conditions of older Europeans.

In the fourth wave, which started in autumn 2010, Estonia, Hungary, Luxemburg, Portugal and Slovenia joined the SHARE survey.

These additional biomarkers are expected to be a useful instrument for comparing the objective health status with the subjective perception of the respondents.

All respondents who had already taken part in the third wave of SHARE (SHARELIFE) were interviewed about their current situation in terms of family, friends, health as well as social and financial circumstances.

SHARE, like other surveys, had to suspend regular face-to-face interviews in March 2020 due to strict epidemiological control measures in the 28 participating countries.

This was particularly urgent as SHARE targets the population aged 50 and over, including very old respondents and residents of retirement and nursing homes who are at highest risk of possible infection.

In five countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy), an additional project was carried out to measure the cognitive abilities of respondents (SHARE HCAP).