English Longitudinal Study of Ageing: Waves 0-10, 1998-2023

 
<p>The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) is a longitudinal survey of ageing and quality of life among older people that explores the dynamic relationships between health and functioning, social networks and participation, and economic position as people plan for, move into and progress beyond retirement. The main objectives of ELSA are to:</p>
<ul>
<li>construct waves of accessible and well-documented panel data; </li><li>provide these data in a convenient and timely fashion to the scientific and policy research community;
</li><li>describe health trajectories, disability and healthy life expectancy in a representative sample of the English population aged 50 and over;
</li><li>examine the relationship between economic position and health; </li><li>investigate the determinants of economic position in older age; </li><li>describe the timing of retirement and post-retirement labour market activity; and
</li><li>understand the relationships between social support, household structure and the transfer of assets.
</li></ul>
<p>Further information may be found on the <a href="https://www.elsa-project.ac.uk/">
ELSA project</a> website, the or <a href="https://natcen.ac.uk/participant-contents/elsa-50-health-and-life">Natcen Social Research: ELSA</a> web pages.</p>
<p><strong>Health conditions research with ELSA - June 2021</strong></p>
<p>The ELSA Data team have found some issues with historical data measuring health conditions. If you are intending to do any analysis looking at the following health conditions, then please contact
<a href="mailto:[e-mail]">[e-mail]</a> for advice on how you should approach your analysis. The affected conditions are: eye conditions (glaucoma; diabetic eye disease; macular degeneration; cataract), CVD conditions (high blood pressure; angina; heart attack; Congestive Heart Failure; heart murmur; abnormal heart rhythm; diabetes; stroke; high cholesterol; other heart trouble) and chronic health conditions (chronic lung disease; asthma; arthritis; osteoporosis; cancer; Parkinson's Disease; emotional, nervous or psychiatric problems; Alzheimer's Disease; dementia; malignant blood disorder; multiple sclerosis or motor neurone disease).</p>
<p>For information on obtaining data from ELSA that are not held at the UKDS, see the ELSA <a href="https://www.elsa-project.ac.uk/genetic-data-access">Genetic data access</a> and <a href="https://www.elsa-project.ac.uk/accessing-elsa-data">Accessing ELSA data</a> webpages.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Wave 10 Health data</span> <br>Users should note that in Wave 10, the health section of the ELSA questionnaire has been revised and all respondents were asked anew about their health conditions, rather than following the prior approach of asking those who had taken part in the past waves to confirm previously recorded conditions. Due to this reason, the health conditions feed-forward data will not be archived, as was done in previous waves.</p><p><i>ELSA IFS Derived and Financial Derived data and documentation update, February 2025:<br></i>For the 44th edition (February 2025), all IFS derived and financial derived datasets and accompanying documentation have been updated. The IFS has improved some calculations of derived variables, so a redeposit was required.</p><p><em>Harmonized dataset:<br></em>Users of the Harmonized dataset who prefer to use the Stata version will need access to Stata MP software, as the version G3 file contains 11,779 variables (the limit for the standard Stata 'Intercooled' version is 2,047).</p>
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<p><em>ELSA COVID-19 study</em>:<br>
A separate ad-hoc study conducted with ELSA respondents, measuring the socio-economic effects/psychological impact of the lockdown on the aged 50+ population of England, is also available under SN 8688,
<a href="https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/studies/study?id=8688">English Longitudinal Study of Ageing COVID-19 Study</a>.<i><br></i></p>
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