Harmonized Multi-Cohort Data on Childhood Adversity and Aging Outcomes

Dai Taoming provides harmonized longitudinal data from three major aging studies: CHARLS, ELSA, and SHARE. The dataset supports serial mediation analysis of pathways linking childhood socioeconomic adversity to incident IADL impairment in later life, with follow-up durations ranging from 6.26 to 10.47 years. It includes harmonized scores for adversity, education, cognition, depressive symptoms, and core covariates.

Use Cases

• Conduct serial mediation analysis based on the described pathway from childhood socioeconomic disadvantage to incident IADL impairment.
• Compare aging trajectories and risk factors across different national contexts based on data from CHARLS, ELSA, and SHARE.
• Analyze the role of adult educational disadvantage as a mediator between early-life adversity and later-life cognitive decline.
• Investigate the relationship between depressive symptom burden and functional impairment in older adults.
• Perform survival or time-to-event analysis for incident IADL impairment using the provided time-to-event data.

Strengths

• Data is harmonized across three major, population-based aging cohorts (CHARLS, ELSA, SHARE) for cross-cohort comparability.
• The analytical sample is a fixed complete-case dataset with follow-up durations specified (6.26 to 10.47 years).
• Includes time-to-event data for incident IADL impairment, suitable for survival analysis.
• Variables are specifically constructed for mediation analysis, including harmonized scores for adversity, education, and cognition.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset is a fixed complete-case subset, which may introduce selection bias if missing data was not random.

Provenance

Source

China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).

Collection Method

Harmonized, multi-cohort longitudinal data drawn from population-based aging studies and processed for serial mediation analysis.

Time Range

Follow-up durations range from 6.26 to 10.47 years across cohorts.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-31 12:44:24; freshness should be verified.

Geography

China, England, and multiple European countries.