by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
Hearing loss in the USA tops 32,000,000 people this year according to the MarkeTrak VII report. And this figure is conservative because it only considers people that live in “households”. It does not count the millions of residents in nursing homes, retirement homes, mental hospitals, prisons, college dormitories and military installations.
In addition, it does not consider the millions of hard of hearing people that do not identify themselves as having a hearing loss. Thus, the true figure could easily be twice this number.
Not only is this 32 million figure alarming, it is growing by the hundreds of thousands each year. By 2050, the number of self-professed hard of hearing people living in “households” in the USA is projected to reach 52.9 million according to the above survey. That’s a lot of hard of hearing people!
Here are the projections for the future.
2010 33.4 (millions of hard of hearing people)
2015 35.8
2020 38.4
2025 41.0
2030 43.7
2035 46.4
2040 48.8
2045 50.9
2050 52.9
(For the complete article see the Hearing Review, July, 2005.)