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Hearing Loss Prevalence (US)

Below is the data from a study on hearing loss in US adults by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and at the Harvard School of Public Health. The team studied interviews and hearing loss tests from four nationally representative surveys that were conducted between 1976 and 2006 on men and women aged 20-69. They developed a methodology for standardizing the surveys and then used all of the available data to find the true trend in hearing loss reduction. The research shows disagreement across surveys and even within some of the same surveys over time. It also shows that the 1990s saw steady reductions in hearing loss that slowed down considerably after 2000.

Data (tables in downloadable Excel files)

Table 1. Prevalence of hearing loss before corrections for biases in self-reports (36k xls)

Table 2. Prevalence of hearing loss after corrections for biases in self-reports (22k xls)

Table 3. Odds ratios for reporting hearing loss in various national surveys, relative to the NHANES IV examination surveys (1999–2004) (22k xls)

Full Citation: Ikeda N, Murray CJL, Salomon JA. Tracking Population Health Based on Self-reported Impairments: Trends in the Prevalence of Hearing Loss in US Adults, 1976-2006. American Journal of Epidemiology. 2009 May 18; 170(1):80–87.