Wiener Gesundheits- und Sozialsurvey Vienna Health and Social ...

threshold, however, life expectancy strongly depends on
a country’s economic performance.
The self-objectified areas of health considered for our
purpose included ailments or symptoms felt in the past
two weeks as well as chronic diseases. 78.5 percent of
women and 71.2 percent of men of all ages claim to have
been afflicted by at least one of the ailments listed. Most
frequent ailments for men and women are pains in the
locomotor system which increase drastically with age.
Approximately 20 percent of men and 25 percent of
women suffer from fatigue independent of age. 26.1 percent
of women and approximately 16 percent of men often
suffer from headaches. Other frequent ailments include
sleeping disorders (19.1 percent of women and
13.2 percent of men are afflicted) which become more
frequent with age. Hearing and vision impairment,
weakness of memory and incontinence are common ailments
in old age. Lower income groups are afflicted by
the majority of ailments two or three times as often as
others. This is true particularly for psychosomatic disorders,
such as depressions, depressive moods, headaches,
anxiety/nervousness, fatigue and exhaustion. The above
distinction is less apparent with joint aches, stomach
and digestive disorders, shortness of breath, inability to
concentrate and sleeping disorders (with women).
By far the most common allergy is rhinitis which only
occurs at certain times of the year. Mainly younger men
(17.9 percent) and women (14.2 percent) between 25
and 44 years of age are afflicted. It occurs less with increasing
age and is rarely found among people in lower
positions. The number of allergies and allergens drops
with increasing age. Unlike most ailments, allergies and
reactions to allergens are more frequent among people
with higher education.
As a whole, the number of ailments suffered by men and
women drops as the level of income and education rises.
There is no similar correlation between the frequency of
ailments and the level of professional status.
Unlike as with ailments, the number of men and women
suffering from at least one chronic disease is approximately
the same with 30 percent each. The prevalence of
chronic diseases increases with age, from between 7 percent
and 10 percent among 16 to 24 year olds to approximately
60 percent among people aged 74 and above.
However, this also means that around 40 percent of people
in the age group above 75 do not suffer from chronic
WIENER GESUNDHEITS- UND SOZIALSURVEY
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
diseases at all and a further 10 percent are hardly restricted
or not restricted at all by their illness. The majority
of people suffering from chronic diseases, more than
90 percent, claim to be fairly or extremely restricted in
their daily lives. People in higher income brackets in the
age group above 45 develop far fewer chronic diseases.
This is true particularly for women, the difference in
prevalence between the lowest and the highest income
level being almost 50 percent. There is a similar difference
between the lowest and highest educational level, a
correlation which did not appear so for the different professional
levels.
Both men and women primarily suffer from diseases of
the locomotor system, followed by circulatory diseases
and diseases of the respiratory organs. The number of
circulatory diseases rapidly increases with retired people,
particularly men. One in five men and one in seven
women are afflicted. Drastic increases with age were also
noted in the number of endocrinologic diseases (nutritional
and metabolic disorders), diseases of the nervous
system and the sensory organs, as well as in the number
of injuries. Circulatory diseases and diseases of the locomotor
system in particular are conspicuously less frequent
among people at higher income levels. Similarly,
there is a strong correlation between the level of education
and the number of endocrinologic and psychiatric
disorders, diseases of the nervous system and injuries, all
of which are less frequent among people at higher educational
levels. In the age group above 45, people in the
lowest income bracket suffer from diabetes five times as
often as those in the highest income bracket. Hypertonia
is also widespread among people in the age group above
45, with approximately 22 percent of men and 8 percent
of women being affected. The frequency of hypertonia
decreases with increasing income, most visibly so in the
case of women, where numbers go down to one fifth.
Approximately 8.5 percent of men and the same number
of women suffered at least one leisure time accident in
the course of one year. Leisure accidents are most widespread
in the youngest age group, i.e. among people aged
16 to 24. Most of these are sports accidents, 50 percent in
the case of men, 30 percent in the case of women. People
in the highest income bracket are injured least often,
those in the lowest income bracket most often so.
We then looked at the number of people in Vienna suffering
from disabilities or restrictions in their daily lives
resulting from diseases or injuries. Around 18 percent of
39