REWHARD - National infrastructure for research about social relations, work and health across the life course

REWHARD provides a basis for cutting-edge research at the intersection of social relations, work and health.

It holds four highly competitive longitudinal databases: SLOSH, LNU, IMAS and STODS, covering successive cohorts of the population in Sweden born in the 1800s-2000s, in total 13 million individuals from childhood to old age/death, with complementary data from administrative registers, questionnaires and interviews from a period of seven decades: 1950-2020.REWHARD’s data facilitate research on how individual welfare evolves over the life-course: How do health, private and working life (incl. sick leave) interact with institutional structures and changes to promote or hamper human wellbeing and flourishing?

The findings can be used to design policies and interventions tackling the major societal challenges of our time, e.g. pandemics, migration, aging populations, climate change and the impact of new technologies such as AI.A grant from VR will secure Sweden a position at the forefront of research on human welfare.

REWHARD will conduct new data collections, extend, curate and develop the four databases to ensure the continued availability of updated high-quality data for national and international research; publish harmonised metadata online; provide researchers with data, syntaxes and results; share expertise on handling complex longitudinal register and survey data, and organise seminars for users.Worldwide, Sweden is probably the only country to provide an infrastructure of such an extent and scope.

The complementary advantage of access to both high quality survey and population-based register data exist in very few countries, of which Sweden has the largest population. This size offers possibilities to study even rare exposures or outcomes and to focus on subgroups in the population.

Run by internationally renowned experts, REWHARD adds exceptional national value by providing the basis for innovative research in an area of outmost societal importance.