Physical health

‘Ageing’ is usually defined as the progressive loss of function with advancing age, and increasing rates of health problems including mortality are one of its main manifestations (Kirkwood and Austad 2000). Due to improvements in living standards, public health interventions and innovations in medical care, average life expectancy at birth has spectacularly increased during the twentieth century, to reach levels of around 75 years for men and 80 years for women throughout Western Europe (White 2002). Although most people develop some health problems long before the age of dying, there is large variability within and between populations in ‘healthy ageing’, as shown by comparisons of ‘health expectancies’ (years of life lived in good health) between European countries (Perenboom, van Oyen and Mutafova 2002) and between socio-economic groups within countries (Sihvonen, Kunst, Lahelma et al. 1998). SHARE offers excellent opportunities for studying the prevalence of age-related health problems in Western Europe, for looking at variations in this prevalence between populations and population subgroups, and for analysing the consequences of health problems for other domains such as employment and health care utilisation. This contribution introduces the main indicators of physical health that have been studied in SHARE, and presents some basic data on the prevalence of health problems among its respondents.