Five bachelor research projects of Erasmus School Economics have been selected for the program of the fifth edition of the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe)Â User Conference. Jesse Owie, Lisanne van Prooyen Schuurman, Eline van de Ven and Sebastiaan Visser will travel to Luxembourg in mid-November to present their findings and exchange their ideas with other attendees.
Working with Robin L. Lumsdaine, visiting professor of Erasmus School of Economics, who is also active in the research areas of health, ageing and retirement, the students first became acquainted with the SHARE dataset through their case studies work, continuing to use it for their bachelor theses. Two additional joint projects with Professor Lumsdaine also developed from that work. One, with Lisanne van Prooyen Schuurman and Eline van de Ven, is an extension of their case studies research that also included Kim van Gulik and Mike Lau and considers how difficult episodes early in life (e.g., hunger, stress, financial hardship) affects people’s views about their future standard of living. Â
The second, with Sebastiaan Visser, additionally uses data from China to conduct a cross-national comparison of the influence of question order and wording on responses to a survey question asking people to rate their health. In addition to the two joint projects (one of which will be presented by Lumsdaine and the other by Eline van de Ven), three students will also present their thesis work. Jesse Owie’s thesis looked at whether having a positive attitude influences a person’s willingness to take financial risks while Lisanne van Prooyen Schuurman’s thesis compared the effects of the recent financial crisis on elderly in Spain and Italy versus those in Germany and the Netherlands. Sebastiaan Visser’s thesis investigated what factors lead to productive aging in China and compared his results to those in Europe (using SHARE). `The SHARE dataset is one of the pre-eminent datasets for studying aging and healthcare issues in Europe,’ said Lumsdaine. `To have five undergraduate projects on the program of a major international conference such as this is a tremendous accomplishment and a testament to both the quality of the training these students receive and the amount of hard work that they have put into their research.’ All four students are now pursuing their masters at Erasmus School of Economics.