In the mid-1980s, scientists at the National Institute on Aging and other organizations agreed that existing retirement research no longer reflected the changing face of retirement.  That realization gave birth to the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), one of the largest and most ambitious national surveys ever undertaken.

Now 30 years' strong, the multi-layered and complex HRS provides virtually endless opportunities to better understand how we age with its longitudinal household survey data on retirement, wealth and savings, disability, family, health and well-being.

CESR researchers are engaged in data collection and sharing, as well as in advancement of next-generation tools for Internet and real-time surveys. Among other issues, we are exploring savings and investment behavior,  retirement trends, and subjective well-being; shifts in population health; attitudes about aging; and, how public policy affects health and income variability in old age.

HRS-family data is included in the Global Aging Data Repository.

For questions about the HRS and to request data, please see their informative website, http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/.