The Gateway to Global Aging and Social Science & Medicine hosted the Education, Aging, and Global Health Conference in Boston, Massachusetts from September 4-5, 2025. The conference brought together over 50 researchers, representing disciplines ranging from economics to medicine to sociology, who all shared an interest in education and health research.

Building on the research topics of the Gateway 2023 long-term care (LTC) conference, the Gateway to Global Aging team, in partnership with Health Economics, has developed and published a virtual special issue featuring eight peer-reviewed papers from the conference that examine LTC policies and their impact on aging populations.

The Gateway education policy team recently released version 1.2 of the USA Compulsory Schooling Policy Details Document. This version of the policy report includes compulsory schooling and child labor policy documentation for all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.

The Gateway to Global Aging and Longitudinal Aging Study in India – Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia (LASI-DAD) study teams attended the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) in Toronto, Canada, from July 25th to 31st.

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) team hosted an international writing retreat for the Gateway to Global Aging Environmental Exposome Research Group from June 8-11, 2025, at University College London (UCL).

The Gateway Policy Explorer continues to expand its offerings, providing more detailed policy research on historical education, long-term care, and retirement policies across the United States and around the world. This blog post provides an overview of the recent additions to the Gateway Policy Explorer and gives a preview of what policy information will be available later this year.

We are please to announce that the newest version of the Harmonized LASI-DAD data files and raw study data are now available at the Gateway to Global Aging Data Website. These newly released data files include both Wave 1 and Wave 2 data. Here we highlight new additions to these data files and where to access the data and accompanying documentation.

On November 13, 2024, the Gateway team hosted the first Gateway Data Enclave Workshop during the Gerontological Society of America Annual Meeting in Seattle. This workshop kicked off research projects using new data resources available in the Gateway Data Enclave.

To facilitate comparative studies with other HRS-INS and to increase topical coverage, the Gateway team built a supplement to the RAND HRS, which we call the Harmonized HRS. The Harmonized HRS provides a host of research-ready variables for users looking to conduct longitudinal and cross-study research.

On November 6-8, 2024, the SHARE BERLIN Institute and Gateway to Global Aging Data jointly hosted the SHARE-Gateway User Conference in Berlin.

We are pleased to introduce the Gateway Data Enclave, a secure, remote-access computing desktop that allows U.S.-based researchers to analyze publicly available data from the Health and Retirement Studies – International Network of Studies (HRS-INS) while safeguarding these data sources from unauthorized access and use.

Explore expanded retirement, long-term care, and education policies with the newly enhanced Gateway Policy Explorer.

An overview of the Asian Development Policy Report 2024: Aging Well in Asia's findings. It provides suggestions to promote the well-being of the aging Asian population, through policy.

In collaboration with the HCAP International Network, members of the Gateway team recently published an article on the best approaches to using HCAP data to make comparisons cross-nationally.

The Gateway recently launched the Environmental Exposome Dashboard.

The Gateway recently hosted our first Long-Term Care Conference in Washington, D.C. November 7-8. This is a recap of the Day 2 panel.

The Gateway recently hosted our first Long-Term Care Conference in Washington, D.C. November 7-8. This is a recap of the Day 1 panel.

The Gateway recently hosted our first Aging Research Hackathon from July 31 to August 3 at the University of Southern California!

The China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) is a longitudinal household survey interviewing people aged 45 and over (and their partner) in China. Apart from their regular survey waves CHARLS conducted a separate life history interview in 2014.

The Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS/ENASEM) is a national longitudinal household survey for the study of health, economic status, and quality of life among persons aged 50 and over in Mexico.

Many studies in the International Network of Health and Retirement Studies have included measures of stress and well-being. Working with experts in the field the Gateway has built user-guides and harmonized variables, allowing users to understand and utilize these measures.

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe is a cross-national panel study of people aged 50 years and over and their partners living in more than 25 European countries and Israel.

We used data from India’s first nationally representative aging study, the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI), to examine the gender disparity in cognitive function among adults aged 45 and older.

While the outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic is still uncertain, resources such as the RTI-COVID India Phone Survey are available to start to better understand the socioeconomic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Indian households.

The Gateway recently released a user guide on the physical functional health measures available in harmonized studies.

It's survey results time again! Your insight is invaluable to use as we plan the next steps for the Gateway to Global Aging Data.

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) is a nationally representative, longitudinal household survey for the study of health, economic position, and quality of life among the elderly in England.

To illustrate on a conceptual level that there are differences in HCAP batteries across countries. We have a framework for identifying those differences. More importantly, we have a framework for identifying whether those differences lead to impactful differences on individual cognitive scores.

The Gateway team recently worked with the World Health Organization on their Baseline Report for the Decade of Healthy Ageing 2021-2030.

The Harmonized LASI public data release is set to facilitate further analysis of rich data from the world's second most populous country, India.

Researchers investigate how exposure to household air pollution from polluting cooking fuel relates with cognitive function across three low- and middle-income countries.

The China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) is a nationally and urban-rural representative survey of people aged 45 years and over and their partners, regardless of age, living in China. The baseline survey was fielded in 2011 and 2012 and follow-up surveys have been conducted in 2013, 2015, and 2018.

The Gateway to Global Aging Data is pleased to announce our Monthly Analysis of Global Aging Data Seminar Series.

A supplement to the June 2021 issue of The Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences features a collection of papers to answer key questions, fill knowledge gaps, and advance our understanding of social and economic influences on aging.

Our team maintains a database of the questionnaire metadata spanning all the waves of HRS family aging surveys released to date. To aid our visitors in finding particular questions/variables of interest in our indexed metadata, we have provided a metadata search feature on our Surveys at a Glance page.

The Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) is a panel study of people over age 45, living in South Korea. A core survey is conducted every even-numbered year starting from 2006, and Waves 1 – 7 have been released so far. In order to make the survey more accessible, the USC Gateway to Global Aging team created the Harmonized KLoSA, a user-friendly version of a subset of the KLoSA.

Announcement for the newest version of the Harmonized LASI-DAD data files and the raw study data. Now available for download. These newly released data files include the sample from all three phases of Wave 1 data collection.

The Gateway to Global Aging is adding a new feature – the Institutional Rules Explorer. The Explorer provides contextual details about the policy and institutional arrangements of particular countries over time. The initial release of the Explorer is focused old-age retirement policies – including old-age pensions, social assistance, and health insurance.

Being users of the international HRS family of surveys ourselves, we understand just how difficult it can be to find comparable items across surveys. In order to make this task easier, the Gateway has created 23 individual concordance tables covering 13 separate topics comparing the questions asked across surveys.

A detailed introduction to The Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) - a nationwide panel survey that aims to scientifically investigate the health, economic, and social determinants and consequences of population ageing in India.

A detailed introduction to The Malaysia Ageing and Retirement Survey (MARS) - a nationwide panel study involving people aged 40 years and over in Malaysia.

The details of the registration, approval process, and length of time until granted access vary by study. To help explain these differences and guide users through the registration process and data download steps, we have created “Data Download Guides” for each study.

A detailed introduction about the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) - a national longitudinal household survey for the study of health, economic status, and quality of life among persons aged 50 and over, and their spouses, regardless of age, in Mexico.

In line with our goals to make key information about each study readily available to researchers, we have recently released overview pages that briefly summarize each HRS-family study’s sampling frame, method of data collection, sample, available data linkages, and data access process.

Several studies have collected data on the past events and circumstances in a respondent's life using life history interviews. These data have organized and made comparable in the Harmonized SHARE & ELSA Life History data.

The Gateway team hosted a virtual Gateway to Global Aging Project Meeting with collaborators from across the globe to provide updates on current projects and discuss new innovations for the next project cycle.

The Harmonized HRS EoL data file presents multiple exploration advantages for researchers. This blog post addresses two of these merits. 1) promote usability for researchers and individuals who aim to explore the exit interview, 2) help the user to conduct comparative analyses across the HRS Family of Surveys.

Global efforts in studying Alzheimer’s and other dementias are paramount due to the increase in life expectancy around the world. With this growth in the older population, LASI-DAD becomes vital to better understand risk factors contributing to late-life cognitive decline.

As some of you may know, the Gateway to Global Aging Data recently conducted a survey of our users, asking them about their experience with our website and data products. Here, we take a look at the results.

Due to the innovations and success of the study, the HRS has served as a model for sister studies around the world. As of 2017, the Health & Retirement Study and its international sister studies have conducted nearly 1.1 million interviews in 44 countries.

We explore how the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) was designed to leverage the HRS-family of studies to assess dementia risk and cognitive function in countries like USA, India, Mexico, England, and China.