Professor Colm Harmon
According to Professor Colm Harmon, Director of the Geary Institute, the importance of the research lies in the fact that Ireland has Europe’s youngest but most rapidly ageing population while ageing is “one of the greatest medical, social and economic challenges of the 21st century. By studying the ageing population through a common dataset across individual countries, governments will have information that helps measure the effectiveness of different policies. Findings from one country can be applied to other countries to improve policy analysis across all countries.”
The research team in Ireland has interviewed 3,000 Irish residents and their data is being fed into the SHARE project. So far the study’s findings have shown that there is a strong correlation between health, behaviour and socio-economic status. But there are many blanks in our knowledge and understanding of the changes which an ageing population will bring. Professor Harmon has noted, “While the threat to the stability of our pension and health care systems has been discussed widely, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. We know little about changing employability of older workers; we know little about how health is changing as later cohorts enter the retirement age. SHARE provides such data and its value as a research infrastructure lies in the combination of health and employment data with economic and social status.”
