A one-week workshop on the Health and Retirement Study will be offered at the 1996 Summer Institute at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1248. The study focuses on the interrelationships between retirement, health, wealth, and family resources and obligations from late middle-age onward. Currently two waves of HRS data have been collected, the first wave in 1992 and the second in 1994.
Plans call for reinterviews in the future with the same set of people every two years.
Both spouses in married couples were interviewed in the first wave and are being followed, and comparable information is collected about their labor force behavior and circumstances, job characteristics, pension plans, health insurance, disability, physical health and functioning, cognitive functioning, health care expenditures, expectations, and attitudes. Information has also been collected about their income, financial assets, extended family structure, and characteristics of key members, primarily parents and children. Supplemental information is also available from Social Security and employers' pension and health insurance plans. The format of the workshop will include hands-on instruction with the data as well as lectures.