Although life expectancy in Austria has fallen with the pandemic, it has increased more and more in a long-term comparison. In Vienna, the number of people over 100 has doubled in the past 20 years. In 2002 there were still 188 people who were older than 100 years old, by the beginning of November there were already 427 people over 100 living in the federal capital. According to the population register, the oldest woman in Vienna was 114 on November 1, and the oldest in Vienna was 105. “Of course, this is not only due to the increasing population, but above all to the excellent quality of nursing and medical care in Vienna,” emphasizes Mayor Ludwig.
At the beginning of November, 361 women and 66 men were over 100 years old. In mid-November, 14 women and three men aged between 100 and 105 lived in the nursing homes of the Vienna Health Association. One of them is Rudolf Larnsak. On Wednesday he celebrated his 103. Birthday. Mayor Michael Ludwig (SPÖ) was among the well-wishers. The former bricklayer has been dependent on professional help since a fall in 2002 and lives in the Innerfavoriten nursing home.
The available data now also enable a first provisional estimate of life expectancy for the year 2021. In the second year of the corona pandemic, the average life expectancy for men was 78.8 years and for women 83.8 years. Compared to the previous year, life expectancy for men fell slightly (2020: 78.9 years), while it increased slightly for women (2020: 83.7 years). However, life expectancy for both sexes is noticeably below the level before the start of the corona pandemic (2019: 79.5 years for men and 84.2 years for women).
