POLICY EXPLORER
The Policy Explorer captures historical policy changes over the time of surveys covered by the Gateway. It was motivated by the evolution of policies affecting older people across the world. As many of the international network of studies cover more than a decade, understanding policy in place at the time of the survey has become more demanding for researchers. Why are we tracking past policy? Individuals make choices based on current policies and the outcomes we see today may reflect responses to past policies. When interpreting the survey responses of individuals, an understanding of the policy environment under which those individuals operate is critical. The information collected in the Policy Explorer aims to support researchers who want to understand or use policy change in their research and provide context for longitudinal or cross-country differences. The key dimensions to the Policy Explorer are country and time. We prioritize data collection for each country based on its first interview wave and are continuing to expand our data collection back in time to 1992, the start of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) in the US. For policies affecting earlier parts of a respondent's life, such as education policies, we prioritize data collection based on the most prevalent policy periods (e.g., for education policies, we prioritize the most common birth cohorts). Policy series include:
- Retirement policies, including public pension policies, social assistance, and health insurance
- Long-term care policies, including public in-kind benefits, cash benefits, service voucher and 24-hour care systems
- Education policies, including compulsory schooling policies
Additional types of policies are being developed, including educational tracking policies (educational policies), COVID policies, and policies affecting early and mid-adult life such as maternity leave, divorce, and birth control policies.
Current Policy Research Initiatives