Over 160 pension experts and researchers from around the world registered to participate in a webinar on 'The Multifaceted Effects of the Pandemic and the Lockdown Measures on EU Citizens' by Professor Dr Axel Börsch-Supan, Director of the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging at the Max Planck Institute for Law and Social Policy. The webinar was co-hosted by CEPAR and the International Pension Research Association (IPRA) on 29 April 2021.
Professor Börsch-Supan presented the first results from the SHARE-COVID19 project, which studies the non-intended consequences of the epidemic control decisions, among them the largest recession since WWII; the interruption of mobility, one of the basic rights of European citizens; and severe side effects on health since people avoid seeking medical treatment in fear of infection.
SHARE, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, is a transdisciplinary and international survey to measure health, economic and social living conditions of the European population aged 50 or older. This population group has the highest risk of harm due to a COVID-19 infection. The SHARE base panel comprises about 480,000 interviews in all 27 EU member states, Switzerland and Israel, with observations every two years since 2004, and two additional surveys in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic.
Since the pandemic’s severity and the epidemic control decisions have been very different across EU Member States, the SHARE-COVID19 project aims to learn systematically how well healthcare and social systems have responded to the current pandemic and which lessons should be drawn for the future.
The recording is available online now.
Professor Börsch-Supan is Director of the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging, Max Planck Institute for Law and Social Policy, Munich since 2011. He is a full member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He also coordinates the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Professor Börsch-Supan is a member of the Council of Advisors to the German Economics Ministry (chair 2004-08), a member of the German federal governments’ Expert Group on Demography and has served as a consultant to the European Commission, the World Bank, the OECD and several foreign governments. From June 2018 until March 2020 he was member of the Pension Reform Commission of the German Government „Verlässlicher Generationenvertrag”. In May 2020 he was appointed to the French “Commission d’experts sur les grands défis économiques” by the French President Emmanuel Macron.
The webinar was co-hosted by CEPAR in collaboration with IPRA, which is a new international organisation established with the aim of improving the quality and impact of research on pensions and related ageing issues to optimise social and economic outcomes for an ageing world. Its inaugural executive committee comprises representatives of the four founding organisations CEPAR, the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Netspar at Tilburg University, and the OECD.
Individual researchers and organisations including policy groups from across the world, interested in pensions and related ageing issues, are welcome to join the association.