How many people are deaf or hard of hearing? The 2026 numbers

Hearing loss is one of the most common health conditions in the world, and one of the least visible. The most complete estimate, from the Global Burden of Disease study published in The Lancet, puts the number at 1.57 billion people in 2019, or one person in five¹. Most of them can still hear some speech: about three in four, 1.17 billion people, have mild hearing loss¹. A smaller group, more than 70 million people, are deaf³.

This page collects the main figures in one place, from the global picture down to the US and the UK, with each number linked to where it comes from.

The numbers at a glance

The two headline numbers measure different things. The 1.57 billion counts everyone with any hearing loss, including mild loss that someone may not notice day to day. The 430 million counts people whose hearing loss is disabling, which the WHO defines as a loss greater than 35 decibels in the better ear².

The WHO's 430 million comes from the same Global Burden of Disease estimate: 430.4 million people had moderate or worse hearing loss in the better ear in 2019, and 403.3 million still did after accounting for the hearing aids some of them use¹.

What do deaf, hard of hearing and disabling hearing loss mean?

The WHO uses hard of hearing for people with hearing loss that ranges from mild to severe. People who are hard of hearing usually communicate in spoken language and can benefit from hearing aids, cochlear implants, other assistive devices and captioning².

Deaf people mostly have profound hearing loss, which means very little or no hearing². For many deaf people, sign language is an important way to communicate⁶. Worldwide, deaf communities use more than 300 different sign languages³.

Disabling hearing loss is the WHO's threshold for when hearing loss needs care: more than 35 dB in the better hearing ear².

Who has hearing loss?

Hearing loss becomes more common with age². Of all people with a hearing impairment, 62.1% are older than 50¹. Among people older than 60, more than a quarter have disabling hearing loss².

National figures show the same pattern:

• In the UK, more than half of people aged 55 or over have hearing loss, and almost 80% of people over 70 will have it⁵.
• In the US, age is the strongest predictor of hearing loss among adults aged 20 to 69, with the most hearing loss in the 60 to 69 age group⁴.

Hearing loss also starts young for many people. About 95.1 million children and teenagers aged 5 to 19 live with hearing loss², and in the US about 2 to 3 of every 1,000 children are born with a detectable hearing loss in one or both ears⁴.

Where do people with hearing loss live?

Nearly 80% of people with disabling hearing loss live in low- and middle-income countries². The largest number of people with moderate to complete hearing loss live in the WHO's Western Pacific region, which includes China, Japan, South Korea and Australia: 127.1 million people¹.

Low-income countries are also short of specialists. Among low-income countries, about 78% have fewer than one ear, nose and throat specialist per million people, and 93% have fewer than one audiologist per million⁶.

How many people in the US and UK have hearing loss?

In the US, about 37.5 million adults reported some trouble hearing in the 2012 National Health Interview Survey⁴. In the UK, more than 18 million people are deaf, have hearing loss or have tinnitus⁵.

The UK figure counts people who are deaf, people with hearing loss and people with tinnitus together, and it counts hearing levels of 25 dB or worse in one or both ears⁵. The global one in five counts only hearing loss of more than 20 dB in the better ear¹, so the two figures are measured differently and shouldn't be compared directly.

For the main US figures side by side, including children, hearing aids and work, see hearing loss statistics in the United States.

Will the number of people with hearing loss keep growing?

The number of people with hearing loss will keep growing. The Lancet study projects 2.45 billion people with hearing loss by 2050, a 56.1% increase from 2019¹. The rate of hearing loss at any given age is expected to stay about the same. The number grows because the world's population is growing and getting older¹.

The WHO expects more than 700 million people to need hearing care by 2050². It also warns that over 1 billion young adults are at risk of permanent, avoidable hearing loss from unsafe listening practices².

Care is affordable at scale. The WHO estimates that less than US$1.40 extra per person per year would expand ear and hearing care worldwide, with a return of nearly US$16 for every dollar invested over ten years².

What these numbers mean in daily life

Most of the 1.57 billion people with hearing loss are not deaf. They hear some speech, rely on spoken language, and lose words when people talk fast, turn away, speak over each other or sit in a noisy room. For them, the WHO lists captioning alongside hearing aids and cochlear implants as a way to follow spoken language², and its 2021 report names captioning and sign language interpretation as services that improve access to communication and education⁶.

Captioning used to mean a trained captioner or a TV with subtitles. Today a phone can do it in the moment. Captio AI, a live captioning app for deaf and hard of hearing people, is one of these tools: its Live Captions show what people say as text on your phone while they are still talking, in more than 60 languages, so you can follow a doctor's appointment, a lecture or a dinner with friends without asking everyone to repeat themselves. More ways to make conversations work between deaf and hearing people are on our page about communicating with deaf and hard of hearing people.