Last Updated on October 13, 2026 by Karl Thompson
The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) is a scientific examination of how the population of England is ageing, from a multidisciplinary perspective.
ELSA explores how a number of factors, such as income, wealth, social inequalities, past life experiences, work, spending patterns, physical and mental health and wellbeing, are all related through the ageing process.
The study has been going for over 20 years now, and the data helps us understand the determinants of healthy ageing over a long period of time.
ELSA follows people aged 50 and over who live in private households in England. Its main fieldwork began in 2002, and over the years more than 19,000 people have taken part. It is a cohort study, with the same people being interviewed every two years.
The study collects a range of biological, genetic, medical, physiological, psychological and social data.
This is an excellent example of a very long-standing longitudinal study.
What ELSA asks its respondents
Key questions asked of respondents include:
- Basic demographic data
- Work, income, benefits and savings
- Mental and physical health
- Social and civic engagement
- Spending patterns
- End of life, through interviews with the relatives of participants who have died
Some years involve more in-depth questions and cognitive tests. Every four years a nurse visits to collect blood samples and measure other health indicators.
Respondents have recently been interviewed in more depth about their retrospective life histories. Participants have also granted access to their financial and health records.
ELSA: Main aims
To examine the ways in which different aspects of life are linked:
- What is the relationship between financial security and health?
- Why does the health of those in lower social positions decline faster?
- How have changes in pension arrangements affected decisions about retirement?
- How do social relationships change with age, and affect health and wellbeing?
- How does declining cognitive function affect the ability to plan a financial future?
ELSA has been designed to be comparable with the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS), so direct comparisons can be made. There is also a family of similar “sister studies” in other countries, meaning broader cross-national comparisons can be made too.
ELSA: Selected findings
ELSA’s findings are spread across many reports and hundreds of research papers. Below are just a few selected key points.
Inequality drives every aspect of ageing…
- Greater wealth is linked to slower decline in health as people age.
- People from deprived backgrounds are more likely to become socially isolated. ELSA’s 2012 report found that wealthier over-50s were half as likely as the least wealthy to become socially isolated.
- Less education earlier in life is linked to worse memory decline in later life.
Inadequate health and social care
The research revealed a large gap between the care that is recommended and the care which is actually received, particularly for conditions most strongly associated with growing older.
Social isolation
In one of the best-known studies using ELSA data, about 6,500 participants aged 52 and older were asked in 2004 whether they had a partner, how often they saw friends and family, and whether they were members of clubs, organisations, committees or religious groups. They were also asked whether they sometimes felt they lacked company.
The researchers then followed those people up to March 2012 to see how many had died. In the most isolated fifth of the group around one in five had died, compared with about one in eight among the least isolated.
HOWEVER, the picture is more complicated than “loneliness kills”. Social isolation was still linked to dying sooner once the researchers had taken people’s age and health into account, but loneliness was not. Lonely people did die sooner, but mainly because they were older and in poorer health to begin with. A lack of social networks is also more common among people who are poorer, who have health problems or who have only basic education, so poverty, poor health and lack of education are a key part of the picture (Steptoe et al., 2013).
This is a nice example of why longitudinal data is so useful: by following the same people forward in time, researchers could test whether isolation came before early death, rather than just finding that the two go together.
Work and pensions
Those in better health are significantly more likely to carry on working.
Relevance to A-level sociology
ELSA is relevant to the families and households module, especially the topic of the ageing population. It is also a good example of a large-scale cohort study for the research methods part of the course.
We have learned a lot from the last 20 years of ELSA, but what we have learned may not be relevant going forwards! What we learned in the last 20 years may be different to what we learn in the next 20 years. Times are a-changing!