7,500 monthly responses
The Singapore Life Panel (SLP) began under the stewardship of the Centre for Research on the Economics of Ageing (CREA) in 2015. Since then, the SLP has followed more than 12,000 Singaporeans aged between 50 and 70 at baseline (July 2015) for five years. In the 70 completed monthly waves, the average number of monthly responses has been remarkably stable at about 7,500, yielding nearly 500,000 interviews. Under CREA, the SLP sought detailed information on indicators of the economic well-being of individuals and limited information on other domains of well-being.
Data to improve well-being of overall population in Singapore
The newly collected data under ROSA will yield an unprecedented knowledge base and help to improve our understanding of (and thereby ability to improve) overall well-being of the older population in Singapore. Individual-level longitudinal data also makes it possible to place well-being in a life course context and to study the distribution of changes in well-being across time as well as at a given moment/period in time. Finally, the SLP high-frequency data also supports studies of stressors and available resources that affect resilience with much greater resolution than previously possible (Uglanova & Staudinger, 2013)[1], and will enable the derivation of measures of latent well-being for each domain and holistically for use in policy design, evaluation, and refinement.
New cohort to be recruited in 2021
Following CREA’s transition into the Centre for Research On Successful Ageing (ROSA) in 2021, the SLP will be refreshed. A new cohort of adults aged 50-55 years will be included in order to allow the tracking of the impact of pre-retirement life changes on the different domains of well-being, as well as identifying cohort differences between the “young” old and the “older” old that is already part of the SLP. Additionally, the SLP will now seek to understand other aspects of well-being beyond the economic to obtain a holistic picture of well-being among older adults in Singapore. The SLP will continue to run under ROSA for another five years in the first instance, from 2021 to 2025.
Striving to be prepared for the ageing population
Overall, the rich information obtained from the panel survey will help Singaporeans and policy-makers alike better understand how to ensure well-being in old age. The data will be completely confidential, and researchers do not know the identity of the participants. The refreshed Singapore Life Panel® will provide rich insights into how Singaporeans fair in their old age. The research will be directly communicated to the Singapore government and its agencies in order to improve the well-being of Singaporeans. Many countries face the ageing dilemma, but Singapore can strive to be the best-prepared country in the world.
[1] Uglanova, E. A., & Staudinger, U. M. (2013). Zooming in on life events: Is hedonic adaptation sensitive to the temporal distance from the event?. Social Indicators Research, 111(1), 265-286.