Harmonization of Cross-National Studies of Aging to the Health and Retirement Study

This paper summarizes and compares measures of chronic diseases and medical conditions in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and its sister surveys from other countries: the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), the Japanese Study on Aging and Retirement (JSTAR), the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), and the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI). The authors analyze and discuss the extent, to which these measures are comparable, the methodological differences in the way information was collected for these measures, and the implications for secondary data analysis. This paper is one in a series of similar papers, each comparing different domains (e.g., cognition, employment and retirement, expectations, transfers, income, and wealth) across these surveys with an aim to encourage rigorous, cross-national and international comparison research on aging populations.