BUSINESS & AGING EDUCATION SPOTLIGHT: Wealth and Health

Where can we find outstanding business and aging data on wealth, health, aging, and generational differences?

Where can we find outstanding business and aging data on wealth, health, aging, and generational differences? The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is sponsored by the NIH's National Institute on Aging and longitudinally follows a national sample of over 20,000 men and women age 50 and older.

The survey started in 1992 and is the leading non-census national data source on the combined health and economic characteristics of middle-aged and older Americans. As respondents age, new samples of middle-agers are brought into the study for age and cohort comparison.

A new Data Book, Growing Older in America: The Health & Retirement Study (2007) describes the breadth and depth of the HRS. As a tool for both teaching and analysis it includes text, tables, and charts on income and wealth, health, work and retirement, and familycharacteristics and intergenerational transfers.Growing Old in America: The Health & Retirement Study

If the link doesn't work, simply Google "NIA, Growing Older in America." Bonus: A free webcast description of the HRS, organized by the Population Reference Bureau, offers 5 half-hour non-specialist segments: Health and Retirement Study