Data access and data preparation. The HRS data cannot be shared, but are available at no cost to researchers (academic, non-profit) who sign a user contract. The first step is to get access to the regular HRS data. All necessary steps and documents are described on the HRS webpage: https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/data-products/access-to-public-data In the second step, researchers who have been granted access to the regular data, can ask for access to the sensitive health. The necessary steps an documents are listed on the HRS website as well: http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/index.php?p=healthdat In the third step, researchers will be able to download 1) the biomarker data, which has been used in the analyses (names: BIOMK06BL_R, BIOMK08BL_R, BIOMK10BL_R, BIOMK12BL_R) 2) the RAND harmonized file, version P for the standard HRS data and finally (names: rndhrs_p) 3) the EXIT files containing information about vitality status of the respondents and cause of death (names: X08A_R, X10A_R, X12A_R, X14A_R). The downloaded files have to be transformed into Stata format (*.dta) by use of the files provided by HRS using the same names as above, but with the ending “.dta”. Then the Stata (version 14.2)/R (version 3.4.1) code provided can be run to manage the HRS data and the run the analyses.