Construction of the Israel Gerontological Data Center (IGDC) commenced in November, 2002. It is one of twelve "Knowledge Centers" that were initially funded by the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and it is the only one to be funded in the area of the social sciences. The Center's aim is to pool data and to link researchers across Israel's universities and research institutes in order to augment gerontological inquiry. The "age revolution," that is, the dramatically increasing longevity that has occurred in our time along with the unprecedented rise in the proportion of older persons within the general population presents an extraordinary challenge to human society. The data center will promote better understanding of the aging of the Israeli population and its social, economic and health-related concomitants by:
1. Facilitating retrospective longitudinal analysis of newly linked data-bases
2. Offering improved capabilities to compare aging trends over time
3. Providing unique computerized search capacities of published and unpublished sources
4. Initiating the collection and analysis of new relevant data
The three main avenues of activity of the IGDC include:
1. Linking of administrative and survey data in order to allow longitudinal analyses previously unavailable to researchers.
2. Establishment of a computerized search capacity to promote efficient scrutiny of age-related statistical tables and.
3. Establishment of a computerized bibliographic function that documents Israeli gerontological research literature, including unpublished research reports and dissertations.
A fourth function is also planned: archiving gerontological data bases and making them available to researchers, contingent upon receipt of additional funding.
Finally, a major additional undertaking of the IGDC is implementation of an Israeli version of the European SHARE Project, the cross-national survey of adults age 50 and over. SHARE-Israel is funded by the National Institute of Aging (NIA) of the American National Institutes of Health, the German Israeli Foundation and the Israeli National Insurance Institute.