If the vast majority of French people are confronted with visual disturbances after the age of 50 (96%), disparities exist before, depending on gender and social level.
From the age of 20, hardly anyone escapes it. Three out of four people suffer from vision problems and, after 50 years, 96% of French people are confronted with sight problems. They are even “the most frequent sensory damage,” notes the Dress, the statistics directorate attached to the Ministry of Health, in a summary document (1).
If the proportion of people declaring an impairment of vision increases with age (46% of 20-29 year olds against 97% of over 80s), this biological phenomenon is due to other factors. 56% of women aged 20-29 face this problem compared to 36% of men. This gap narrows with age and disappears after 60 years.
Living conditions also have an influence. Between the ages of 20 and 39, managers are more likely to report sight problems than manual workers (57% against 32%). But when it comes to serious disorders (blindness, low vision), the relationship is reversed between the two social categories.
9 in 10 French people wear glasses after 50
So, to correct the effects of time on sight, 7 out of 10 French people wear glasses or contact lenses after 20 years, notes the Dress. No surprise, older people, women and executives are more likely to use corrective devices. But the ax falls for everyone after 50 years: 9 in 10 French people buy glasses or contact lenses.
Is this purchase an absolute guarantee of the correction of the disorder? While only 8% of people under 50 have some difficulty seeing the print in a newspaper, those over 80 are 3 times more likely to be embarrassed. Same thing for seeing from afar. Here too, the social criterion penalizes the most disadvantaged.
For the Dress, these disparities in vision correction can be linked to “financial means” but also to the fact that this discomfort may be considered bearable. The organization also recalls that “optics is, after dental care, the second treatment that people give up the most for financial reasons”.
(1) Vision disorders: seven out of ten adults wear glasses (June 2014). Lucie Calvet (Drees), with the collaboration of Pauline Delance, Clément Dufaure, Victor Laliman, Benjamin Quevat (Ensai)
Proportion of people declaring visual disturbances
Proportion of people who say they wear glasses or contact lenses
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