Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • Informational page (government statistics summary)

Quick Statistics About Hearing, Balance, & Dizziness

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/nidcd-hearing-statistics/ · record checked 13 October 2026

  • National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
  • National Institutes of Health, NIDCD

Government (US National Institutes of Health; statistics compiled by NIDCD from federal surveys and published research)

Summary

A US statistics summary separating self-reported difficulty, measured hearing loss, hearing aid use and cumulative implant-device registrations.

Key findings

  • Reports that approximately 15% of US adults aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing, citing the 2012 National Health Interview Survey.
  • NIDCD calculations from 2015-2020 NHANES give disabling hearing loss in about 5% of adults aged 45-54, 10% aged 55-64, 22% aged 65-74 and 55% aged 75 and older. Its footnote defines this as 35 dB or more in the better ear.
  • Among people who could benefit from hearing aids, approximately 16% of adults aged 20-69 and 30% aged 70 and older have ever used them. The footnote describes an NHIS ever-use numerator and a denominator estimated from periodic NHANES hearing examinations for Healthy People tracking.
  • The US cochlear implant totals refer to devices reported voluntarily by manufacturers to the FDA as of December 2019; they are not a count of distinct current listeners.
  • The page states a last-updated date of 20 September 2024; the statistics it assembles refer to different underlying years.

Limits

The summary supplies no sample sizes for its age-specific calculations or hearing aid use estimates and no single observation year for the latter. Ever having used a hearing aid does not establish current ownership, use at an event or ability to connect to a venue system. No venue-demand measurement.

Read the original

www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing

Link checked . We link to the original and do not host copies.

Cited in

Cite this source

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Quick Statistics About Hearing, Balance, & Dizziness. National Institutes of Health, NIDCD. 20 September 2024. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing (accessed 13 October 2026).

The accessed date is when this library last checked the link; use the date you read it. To point readers to this summary instead, link to https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/nidcd-hearing-statistics/

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