A spectacular and unprecedented development in life expectancy has occurred over the last century, particularly for women, with approximately every fifth person in Europe now being a woman aged 50 years or more. They constitute 70 million of the 127.8 million people over 50 years of age in the 12 Member States participating in the MERI project and make up 55% of this population. It is a remarkably heterogeneous category of women and yet research has indicated that scientific studies and official statistics tend to neglect them as an independent target group.

The MERI project is a response to demands made by scientists, representatives of associations and national governments attending a European conference on 'Equal Opportunities for Older Women' in 2001 with its main objective being to increase knowledge about the living conditions and problems of older women and thus improve the empirical basis for: social and public policy and work by national and European associations; encouraging future research work on older women while also raising the general public’s awareness about the situation of older women.

MERI research was carried out in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. National articles and European overviews, both in full versions and executive summaries, are published here in English and in the languages of the participating countries