Deeper investigation of the social and economic issues faced by individuals, society as a whole and the economy as people transition through the period leading up to and beyond the state pension age is therefore essential.
Within this research theme, ADR Northern Ireland is currently drawing from both UK-wide and Northern Ireland-specific administrative datasets to examine the factors influencing retirement, financial wellbeing and health later in life. Linking data relating to access to health services for older people, for example, will provide an opportunity to examine late-life health inequalities related to service use, and could inform health and social care policy and practice regarding early prevention by identifying the most at-risk populations.
ADR Scotland is continuing to develop work on a dataset exploring care in the later stages of life (including end-of-life care in particular), sourcing data from records such as inpatients and day cases, cancer registration, the Prescribing Information System, the Community Health Index (CHI), the 2001 and 2011 Census and the Deaths Register. Currently, ADR Scotland is planning to use this dataset to further explore trends over time and the social factors that influence the availability of informal care at the end of life in Scotland, and the ways in which informal care impacts on the use of formal care.
In addition, ADR Scotland is linking data from a wide variety of sources to explore the relationship between multimorbidity and the type and amount of health and social care required for over 65s. The data being linked includes data from the prescribing information system, the CHI, the Unscheduled Care Data Mart, death records and the social care survey.
These datasets will help us build a more complete understanding of the challenges faced by the UK’s older population to identify ways in which policy can improve quality of life.
More in-depth information about the individual data linkage and research projects being undertaken within this theme can be explored below.
Growing old projects
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ADR UK PhD studentships cohort
24 October 2023
ADR UK is supporting 22 PhD studentships hosted by supervisors at Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) across the UK. These PhD studentships will use ADR UK’s new linked flagship datasets to answer policy-relevant research questions.
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Dynamics in private pension saving
13 February 2023
This project, led by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, will produce two new linked datasets on private pension saving that are high quality and accessible for approved research. The dataset will provide a comprehensive picture of how much money people in the UK are putting into personal pensions set against their employment type and total earnings. It will include employees as well as the self-employed, people working for their own companies and those not working.
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Identifying the links between hearing loss and dementia
5 May 2020
This project will link new and existing health data to examine the relationship between hearing loss, hearing aid use and dementia in Wales.
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Growing old news
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ADR UK 2023 PhD studentships cohort begin their projects
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New data can help inform policies that promote adequate retirement saving
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ADR UK invests further funding in AD|ARC: A UK-wide agricultural data programme
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Scout and Guide participation boosts later life health
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ADR UK funds major new data linkage projects to address vital policy questions
