In addition to having wide-ranging adverse effects the recent economic and financial crisis provides an unprecedented opportunity for research on broader questions relating to the ways in which people understand, and react to, such shocks. This study will address three questions:

• Which subgroups of the population aged 50 and over are likely to have been most affected, by how much?
• What have been the effects of the crisis on expectations and plans for later life?
• What effects have the adverse shocks to wealth had on mental health and wellbeing?

To answer the first research question the wealth (and each of its components) of families in 2008-09 will be compared to that of the same families in 2006-07. This will allow the documentation of the groups of individuals who were relatively exposed to the crisis. Both the second and the third research question will require the estimation of the 'effects' of the crisis. This will be done both by examining how the outcomes of interest evolve as the crisis developed during 2008-09 and by comparing the outcomes of groups affected by the crisis with groups that are relatively unaffected by the crisis.