Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100 Page 101 Page 102 Page 103 Page 104 Page 105 Page 106 Page 107 Page 108Many nations, particularly in Europe, are further along than the United States in population aging, and they have found the multidisciplinary, longitudinal nature of the HRS appealing as a way to obtain a holistic picture of health and retirement trends in their graying populations. One of the first nations to put such a study in place was Great Britain, where a team of researchers in the late 1990s began planning the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), a survey that is directly comparable to the HRS. ELSA is supported by grants from several departments of the British Government, as well as by the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA). The British Government supports ELSA because of its ability to inform both short- and long-term policy options for an aging population. The NIA supports ELSA because of the benefit from comparative analyses of data obtained from people living under very different health and social services arrangements and economic policies. The first rounds of ELSA data were collected in 2002 and 2004, and subsequent waves began in 2006. The success of the HRS and ELSA has spawned a major international study that now tracks health and retirement trends in Europe. SHARE— the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe—involves Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Italy, and Greece. Approximately 130 researchers from the participating nations have been organized into multidisciplinary country teams and cross-national work- ing groups, assisted by a number of expert support and advisory teams. The European study also features many technical innovations designed to maximize cross-national comparability. For example, it employs a single, centrally programmed survey instrument that uses an underlying language database to create country- and language-specific instruments. The initial success of SHARE generated extraordinary interest and led to extending this project to Israel, Ireland, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Population aging is also becoming a major policy concern in developing countries. The HRS concept is being applied in the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), the first such effort in a developing country. The MHAS is a prospective panel study of Mexicans born prior to 1951. Its 2001 baseline survey was nationally representative of the older Mexican population and similar in design and content to the HRS. A second round of data collection was undertaken in 2003. In addition to the range of issues that can be considered using HRS data, the MHAS offers an opportunity to explore aging and health dynamics in the context of international migration. The HRS and SHARE concepts have also been emulated in Eastern Asia. South Korea is already planning the second wave of the Korean Longitudinal Study on Aging, while planning for initial waves is well advanced in China, Thailand, and Japan, and initial planning for an Indian HRS has begun. THE HRS: A MODEL FOR OTHER COUNTRIES IN T ROD UC TI ON 18