While the role of local contextual factors as determinants of well-being has been broadly acknowledged, the literature has focused primarily on identification of individual level determinants. Using a unique dataset linking regional and individual-level information we investigate the association of well-being and local conditions among a sample of Polish individuals aged 50 and over. The results confirm high correlation of well-being with income, and we show that this correlation grows with the quality of local conditions. Similarly, a change in the composite measure of the latter is positively associated with well-being only for high income respondents. The findings highlight a particular set of policy challenges from the point of view of old age poverty and area-based social exclusion. They offer support for targeted financial transfers, and call for improvements in local conditions, in particular in accessibility to public services for low-income older individuals.

Homeownership has been shown to be related to various aspects of well-being, although both the causal nature of this relationship and the possible channels behind it have been difficult to identify. We examine an important mechanism which could be responsible for the positive effects of homeownership, namely its role in providing material security in old age. Using data from 15 European countries, we analyse the relationship between homeownership and material security, as measured through subjective evaluation of the likelihood of being better or worse off in the future. We find that homeowners have a higher level of material security than renters, and this association is especially strong for those living in big cities. For this subsample, in comparison to renters, owning a property in the top quartile of the home value distribution is associated with an increase in the probability of expecting to be better off in the future by as much as 43%. We interpret the results as support for the argument that homeownership offers a very particular form of material security, which, through reduction of perceived material risks, may be behind its positive implications for well-being.

We use data from an international survey conducted in eight countries of Central and Eastern Europe and apply the method of multivariate reweighting to study the role of socio-economic characteristics and gender norms for the extent of underreporting of the prevalence of more discreet forms of gender-based abuse and harassment. We find that gender norms and attitudes towards abuse are responsible for a large part of the underreporting of harassment in Georgia and Russia, while differences in socio-economic characteristics are the key driving factors behind the underestimated levels of harassment in Belarus. We argue that a better understanding of the cross-country variation in the scale of discriminative behaviours against women needs to be based on a careful methodological design of internationally comparable surveys. In countries with high gender inequalities there is a clear need for policies aimed at increasing awareness and sensitivity towards more discreet abusive behaviours towards women.

Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE, 2004–17) and time diaries from Poland (2013), the U.S. (2006–16), the U.K. (2014–15) and France (2009–10), we examine differences between widowed and partnered older women in well-being and its development in widowhood. Most importantly, our analysis accounts for time use, an aspect which has not been studied previously. We trace the evolution of well-being of women who become widowed by comparing them with their matched non-widowed ‘statistical twins’ and examine the role of an exceptionally broad set of potential moderators of widowhood’s impact on well-being. We confirm a dramatic decrease in mental health and life satisfaction after the loss of partner, followed by a slow partial recovery over a 5-year period. An extensive set of controls recorded prior to widowhood, including detailed family ties and social networks, provides little help in explaining the deterioration in well-being. Unique data from time-diaries kept by older women in several European countries and the U.S. tell us why: the key factor behind widows’ reduced well-being is increased time spent alone.

Background Given the nature of the spread of SARS-CoV-2, strong regional patterns in the fatal consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic related to local characteristics such as population and health care infrastructures were to be expected. In this paper we conduct a detailed examination of the spatial correlation of deaths in the first year of the pandemic in two neighbouring countries – Germany and Poland, which, among high income countries, seem particularly different in terms of the death toll associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis aims to yield evidence that spatial patterns of mortality can provide important clues as to the reasons behind significant differences in the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in these two countries. Methods Based on official health and population statistics on the level of counties, we explore the spatial nature of mortality in 2020 in the two countries – which, as we show, reflects important contextual differences. We investigate three different measures of deaths: the officially recorded COVID-19 deaths, the total values of excessive deaths and the difference between the two. We link them to important pre-pandemic regional characteristics such as population, health care and economic conditions in multivariate spatial autoregressive models. From the point of view of pandemic related fatalities we stress the distinction between direct and indirect consequences of COVID-19, separating the latter further into two types, the spatial nature of which is likely to differ. Results The COVID-19 pandemic led to much more excess deaths in Poland than in Germany. Detailed spatial analysis of deaths at the regional level shows a consistent pattern of deaths officially registered as related to COVID-19. For excess deaths, however, we find strong spatial correlation in Germany but little such evidence in Poland. Conclusions In contrast to Germany, for Poland we do not observe the expected spatial pattern of total excess deaths and the excess deaths over and above the official COVID-19 deaths. This difference cannot be explained by pre-pandemic regional factors such as economic and population structures or by healthcare infrastructure. The findings point to the need for alternative explanations related to the Polish policy reaction to the pandemic and failures in the areas of healthcare and public health, which resulted in a massive loss of life.

Parental gender preferences may affect partnership decisions and as a result lead to early life disadvantages. We study these preferences in five post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, a region with strong traditional gender norms and persisting inequalities between women and men in labour market outcomes. Using subsamples of census from Belarus, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Russia around 2000 and 2010, we follow Dahl and Moretti (2008), The demand for sons, to examine the effect of the gender of the first-born child(ren) on fertility decisions and relationship stability of their parents. We only find strong evidence of ‘boy preferences’ in fertility decisions in the cases of Romania and Russia. However, unlike Dahl and Moretti (2008), The demand for sons, for the US, we cannot confirm a relationship between the children's gender and parental partnership decisions. This is the case for all examined Central and Eastern European countries, as well as for a number of countries from Western Europe. The cases of Romania and Russia raise questions about other potential consequences of the documented gender preferences. We argue that our approach can be applied more broadly to identify other countries characterised by parental gender preferences, and to motivate further examination of different forms of gender driven early life disadvantages.

We examine changes in the level of physical health using longitudinal data on people aged 50+ from nine European countries covering the years from 2004 to 2017. For this purpose we develop a novel approach to identify age, period and cohort effects, which, in contrast to methods relying on mechanical restrictions, uses a step-wise estimation combining information on physical health with data on cognitive abilities. The approach relies on two important assumptions. First, we estimate relative differences between cohorts in cognitive abilities assuming that only age and cohort effects are responsible for their evolution. We then use the estimated proportional cohort differences to restrict the differences between cohorts in health development. The method is applied to the dynamics of four measures of poor health: weak grip strength, limitations in mobility, in activities of daily living (ADL) and in instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Our results suggest insignificant or adverse period effects for the evolution of physical health. For example, the difference in likelihood of poor health as measured through weak grip strength between 2004 and 2017 is 2.1 percentage points, p.p., (95% CI -4.3, 8.4), and the corresponding numbers for the other three measures are respectively: 2.0 p.p. (CI -1.6, 5.6); 2.2 p.p. (CI -0.2, 4.7) and 3.0 p.p. (CI 0.3, 5.8). These estimates, which reflect the implications of time over the period of 14 years, are relatively low, but they highlight the surprising fact that any improvements in health in the examined period have been driven essentially by cohort effects. Our evidence is consistent with some earlier studies and sheds new light on recent (pre-pandemic) trends in life expectancy. It also raises questions concerning efficacy of healthcare and equal access to high quality care – the factors one would consider as important determinants of period effects in health.

Objective: We use the panel structure of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data for 14 countries to examine the implications of material and social deprivation for health deterioration in old age and mortality. Method: To minimize the potential endogeneity bias, we examine the relationship between deprivation and changes in health rather than levels of health. We include a substantial set of fixed “initial conditions,” and extend the controls with health measures, as observed at the initial period. Results: The results of the probit regression suggest a strong and statistically significant relationship between measures of material and social deprivation and changes in physical and mental health. Mortality is only affected by the social dimension of deprivation. Discussion: Treating material and social deprivation separately rather than as a single social exclusion indicator allows for more specific identification of the role of the two dimensions, which might be important for policy decisions.

We examine the long-term implications of unemployment for material conditions and well-being using the Polish sample from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Retrospective data from the SHARELIFE survey are used to reconstruct labour market experiences across the threshold of the socio-economic transformation from a centrally planned to a free market economy in Poland. These individual experiences are matched with outcomes observed in the survey about 20 years later to examine their correlation with unemployment at the time of the transition. We find that becoming unemployed in the early 1990s correlates significantly with income, assets and a number of measures of well-being recorded in 2007 and 2012. Using plant closures to reflect exogenous changes to labour market status at the time of the transition, we are able to confirm the causal effect of unemployment on income and house ownership 20 years later, but find no evidence for a long-term causal relationship between unemployment and such measures of well-being as life satisfaction, depression and subjective assessment of material conditions.

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Existing evidence consistently reports higher job satisfaction among women, but typically focuses on satisfaction with the job held at the time of survey. This approach overlooks individuals who are not employed when surveyed — most often women, who are more likely either to enter the labour market later or exit earlier in their careers. This study addresses this limitation by examining job satisfaction over the working life. Using retrospective data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we analyse gender differences in satisfaction with the main job across the careers of individuals who ever worked, covering 26 European countries. We find that, once the full employment history is accounted for, women in fact report lower job satisfaction than men in the job they identify as central to their working lives. This pattern appears to be shaped by regional differences, likely reflecting variation in prevailing gender norms across societies. We further investigate life-course employment histories in order to examine the behavioral consequences of job dissatisfaction over time. Our analysis reveals that dissatisfaction may have different long-run consequences with respect to labor market attachment by gender and institutional context.

Long COVID, characterized by symptoms lasting beyond the acute infection phase, has shown varying prevalence across European countries. Despite ongoing research, the factors driving these cross-country differences remain unclear. This study investigates the role of country-level structural factors in explaining these geographic differences in self-reported Long COVID symptoms among adults aged 50 years and older across 27 European countries. Data from the 2020-2021 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Corona Surveys were analyzed. Multi-level logistic regression was used to assess the association between country-level structural factors and self-reported Long COVID symptoms, controlling for individual-level characteristics. The study reveals substantial cross-country variation in self-reported Long COVID symptoms in Europe, mainly explained by structural factors rather than by the characteristics of their residents. Higher healthcare expenditure and lower air pollution, in particular, were linked to lower likelihood of reporting Long COVID symptoms. These findings highlight the importance of healthcare investment and environmental health in mitigating Long COVID symptoms, although further research is needed to explore additional individual- and country-level factors.

Childbirth is a pivotal event shaping parental labour market decisions, with substantial evidence showing that women’s careers are far more affected than men’s. Prior studies have documented reductions in female labour supply, wage penalties, and transitions into more flexible but lower-paid jobs following motherhood, contributing to long-lasting gender disparities in employment outcomes. In this paper we hypothesize that women’s career choices are shaped by care responsibilities, while men mainly respond to financial considerations. We further argue that these patterns emerge way before parenthood and trigger gender occupational sorting since the very beginning of the individual's employment pathway. Using data from the Gender and Generations Survey, we document that revealed intentions of having children in the future affect occupational choices of women early in their employment career. This paper aims at extending the current understanding of gendered career dynamics beyond labour-supply effects, offering new insights into the mechanisms behind the persistent gender inequality in labour market performance.

Long COVID, characterized by symptoms lasting beyond the acute infection phase, has shown varying prevalence across European countries. Despite ongoing research, the factors driving these cross-country differences remain unclear. This study investigates the role of country-level structural factors in explaining these geographic differences in self-reported Long COVID symptoms among adults aged 50 years and older across 27 European countries. Data from the 2020-2021 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Corona Surveys were analyzed. Multi-level logistic regression was used to assess the association between country-level structural factors and self-reported Long COVID symptoms, controlling for individual-level characteristics. The study reveals substantial cross-country variation in self-reported Long COVID symptoms in Europe, mainly explained by structural factors rather than by the characteristics of their residents. Higher healthcare expenditure and lower air pollution, in particular, were linked to lower likelihood of reporting Long COVID symptoms. These findings highlight the importance of healthcare investment and environmental health in mitigating Long COVID symptoms, although further research is needed to explore additional individual- and country-level factors.

This paper analyzes the redistributive effects of joint taxation for married couples in Poland, focusing on the consequences of a major reform of the taxation system implemented in Poland in 2022. Using micro-level Household Budget Survey collected by Statistics Poland, we examine the effects of joint taxation for couples before and after the reform. We compare the beneficiaries of the joint taxation scheme, the size of the tax benefits, and the overall impact on inequality and poverty in Poland.

Advance letters are an indispensable part of survey methodology. Studies have shown that advance letters impact response rates and data quality (e.g. Link & Mokdad 2005, De Leeuw et al. 2007, Lynn 2016). They may also have a greater effect on the participation of older adults in surveys (e.g. Vogl 2018, Link & Mokdad 2005). We present the results of a recent survey experiment conducted in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) wave 10 fieldwork, as part of the sample refreshment procedure in Poland. The 2832 sampled individuals aged 50-97 years were randomly assigned to one of the four versions of an advance letter, which is a standard first point of contact with persons newly invited to participate in the SHARE survey. The versions of the letters were intentionally kept similar but differed in their inclusion of two types of information: a graphical depiction of previous survey findings and a brief paragraph about the monetary incentive granted to respondents for participating. The most successful version of the letter in terms of the response rate was the ‘complete’ version, which included both types of information. The differences in response rates across the four types of letters were modest: around four percentage points between the most and the least successful versions. These differences cannot be ignored when considering overall survey costs. In this study, we also aim to investigate whether the differences in advance letters impacted quality of answers provided in the survey. Our findings provide some important recommendations for the overall design of advance letters targeted at the population aged 50+. However, achieving high response rates in social surveys requires careful consideration of other aspects of survey methodology.

This paper presents a methodological analysis of the potential for harmonizing two major European panel surveys: the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The aim is to assess how these datasets can be synchronized to enable methodologically sound and statistically reliable analyses. As a Proof of Concept (Phase 1), this pilot study focuses on testing the harmonization of selected foundational demographic, economic, and health variables. Using French data as a case study, we take a first step in creating a harmonization framework structured around integrating databases into a common dataset utilizing a natural age overlap. We use data from GGS Round II, Wave 1 and SHARE Wave 9. France was selected as an optimal testbed for the key reason of having the extensive age range overlap between GGS and SHARE for the 50–79 age group, providing a robust basis for methodological testing. While the French case illustrates the framework, the strategy is designed to be scalable to all countries participating in both surveys. The study aims to explore the methodological potential of cohort-aligned harmonization, identifying feasible domains, and mapping major methodological barriers. By identifying these factors in the initial phase, the paper aims to contribute to the development of tools for survey data harmonization with international relevance.

In this paper we build on the existing active ageing literature and the empirical evidence provided by the SHARE data to explore how older Europeans engaged in different types of activity and how this engagement chnaged over time. By examining employment, care roles, and social activities, we aim to deepen the understanding if recent country-specific policies (Walker & Maltby, 2012) were successful in increasing the prevalence of active ageing.