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Basic Facts About Hearing Loss
Statistics Compiled by the

Hearing Loss Association of America

The Nation's Voice for People with Hearing Loss
http://www.hearingloss.org/

• About 20 percent of Americans, 48 million, report some degree of hearing loss.
• At age 65, one out of three people has a hearing loss.
• 60 percent of the people with hearing loss are either in the work force or in educational settings.
• While people in the workplace with the mildest hearing losses show little or no drop in income compared to their normal hearing peers, as the hearing loss increases, so does the reduction in compensation.
• About 2-3 of every 1,000 children are hard of hearing or deaf
• Estimated that 30 school children per 1,000 have a hearing loss.

Statistics sources: Johns Hopkins Medicine
Other sources:  National Information Center on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health, National Council on Aging, and the MarkeTrak VIII Study by Sergei Kochkin, Ph.D.

Things to Know about Hearing Loss

• Hearing loss is a major public health issue that is the third most common physical condition after arthritis and heart disease.
• Gradual hearing loss can affect people of all ages -- varying from mild to profound. Hearing loss is a sudden or gradual decrease in how well you can hear. Depending on the cause, it can be mild or severe, temporary or permanent.
• Degrees of hearing loss: mild, moderate, severe, profound.
• Congenital hearing loss means you are born without hearing, while gradual hearing loss happens over time.
• Hearing loss is an invisible condition; we cannot see hearing loss, only its effects. Because the presence of a hearing loss is not visible, these effects may be attributed to aloofness, confusion, or personality changes.
• In adults, the most common causes of hearing loss are noise and aging. There is a strong relationship between age and reported hearing loss.
• In age-related hearing loss, known as presbycusis, changes in the inner ear that happen as you get older cause a slow but steady hearing loss. The loss may be mild or severe, and it is always permanent.
• In older people, a hearing loss is often confused with, or complicates, such conditions as dementia.
• Noise-induced hearing loss may happen slowly over time or suddenly. Being exposed to everyday noises, such as listening to very loud music, being in a noisy work environment, or using a lawn mower, can lead to hearing loss over many years.
• Sudden, noise-induced hearing loss from gunfire and explosions is the number one disability caused by combat in current wars.
• More often than not severe tinnitus (or ringing in the ears) will accompany the hearing loss and may be just as debilitating as the hearing loss itself.
• Other causes of hearing loss include earwax buildup, an object in the ear, injury to the ear or head, ear infection, a ruptured eardrum, and other conditions that affect the middle or inner ear.
• For more questions and answers read An Overview of Hearing Loss – Its Signs, Implications and Solutions.

Children and Hearing Loss - If you are a parent of a child with hearing loss go to our Parents page for more information

Quick Statistics Compiled by the 
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/pages/quick.aspx
(Numbers at the end of the sentences reference the sources below)

• About 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 children in the United States are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears.1
• More than 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents.2
• Approximately 15% of American adults (37.5 million) aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing.3
• Men are more likely than women to report having hearing loss.3
• One in eight people in the United States (13 percent, or 30 million) aged 12 years or older has hearing loss in both ears, based on standard hearing examinations.4
• About 2 percent of adults aged 45 to 54 have disabling hearing loss. The rate increases to 8.5 percent for adults aged 55 to 64. Nearly 25 percent of those aged 65 to 74 and 50 percent of those who are 75 and older have disabling hearing loss.5
• The NIDCD estimates that approximately 15 percent of Americans (26 million people) between the ages of 20 and 69 have high frequency hearing loss due to exposure to noise at work or during leisure activities.6
• Roughly 10 percent of the U.S. adult population, or about 25 million Americans, has experienced tinnitus lasting at least five minutes in the past year.7
• Among adults aged 70 and older with hearing loss who could benefit from hearing aids, fewer than one in three (30 percent) has ever used them. Even fewer adults aged 20 to 69 (approximately 16 percent) who could benefit from wearing hearing aids have ever used them.8
• As of December 2012, approximately 324,200 cochlear implants have been implanted worldwide. In the United States, roughly 58,000 devices have been implanted in adults and 38,000 in children.9
• Five out of 6 children experience ear infection (otitis media) by the time they are 3 years old.10

Sources

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Identifying infants with hearing loss - United States, 1999-2007. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 59(8): 220-223. 
   Vohr B. Overview: infants and children with hearing loss—part I. Ment Retard Dev Disabil Res Rev. 2003;9:62–64.
2. Mitchell RE, Karchmer MA. Chasing the mythical ten percent: Parental hearing status of deaf and hard of hearing students in the United States. Sign Language Studies. 2004;4(2):138-163.
3. Blackwell DL, Lucas JW, Clarke TC. Summary health statistics for U.S. adults: National Health Interview Survey, 2012. National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Health Stat 10(260). 2014. (PDF)
4. Lin FR, Niparko JK, Ferrucci L.  Hearing loss prevalence in the United States. [Letter] Arch Intern Med. 2011 Nov 14; 171(20): 1851-1852.
5. Based on calculations performed by NIDCD Epidemiology and Statistics Program staff:  (1) using data from the 1999-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES); (2) applying the definition of disabling hearing loss used by the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Expert Hearing Loss Team (hearing loss of 35 decibels or more in the better ear, the level at which adults could generally benefit from hearing aids).
6. Hoffman HJ, Ko C-W, Themann CL, Dillon CF, Franks JR. Reducing noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) in adults to achieve U.S. Healthy People 2010 goals. Abstract. Am J Epidemiol. 2006 Jun (Suppl S);163(11):S122.
7. Based on calculations performed by NIDCD Epidemiology and Statistics Program staff: (1) tinnitus prevalence was obtained from the 2008 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS); (2) the estimated number of American adults reporting tinnitus was calculated by multiplying the prevalence of tinnitus by the 2013 U.S. Census population estimate for the number of adults (18+ years of age).
8. Based on calculations by NIDCD Epidemiology and Statistics Program staff using data collected by (1) the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) annually for number of persons who have ever used a hearing aid [numerator], and (2) periodic NHANES hearing exams for representative samples of the U.S. adult and older adult population [denominator]; these statisticis are also used for tracking Healthy People 2010 and 2020 objectives. See also Use of Hearing Aids by Adults with Hearing Loss (chart).
9. Estimates based on manufacturers’ voluntary reports of registered devices to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, December 2012.
10. Teele DW, Klein JO, Rosner B. Epidemiology of otitis media during the first seven years of life in children in greater Boston: a prospective, cohort study. J Infect Dis. 1989 Jul;160(1):83-94.

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