New Measures and New Designs in Demography of Aging Research

A volume devoted to the demography of aging does well to recognize the importance of innovative data collection and data sharing. The field has been a leader in developing new designs and measurement approaches, and these studies in turn have shaped and pushed the research frontier for the study of aging. The strong commitment to data sharing with open access to the data for the scientific community—and the resulting high volume of research—has begun to influence other related fields. The National Institute on Aging (NIA), and in particular its branch of Behavioral and Social Research, has been the primary force behind this empirical infrastructure, providing funding, scientific leadership, and encouraging collaboration across the studies it supports and beyond.