Fact · Accessibility and health
25percent
WHO projects that nearly 2.5 billion people worldwide, or 1 in 4, will have some degree of hearing loss by 2050.
Quote found word for word on the live source, last checked October 19, 2026
In the source's own words
“Nearly 2.5 billion people worldwide ... will be living with some degree of hearing loss by 2050”
WHO: 1 in 4 people projected to have hearing problems by 2050, World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 2021, Opening paragraph.
Open the original- What it measures
- The figure comes from WHO's first World Report on Hearing, released on 2 March 2021. The 1 in 4 share is the release's own rounding of the 2.5 billion projection, and it refers to any degree of hearing loss, not disabling hearing loss.
- What it does not show
- A modelled projection to 2050, not a count of current cases. It covers any degree of hearing loss, so it is broader than the disabling hearing loss figure WHO gives for 2026. It does not say how many people use captions or speech to text.
In the data
A row of Disability Statistics: Conditions That Make Typing Hard, as WHO 2021, hearing loss by 2050: 25 percent.
- Condition
- Hearing loss
- Who
- World population
- Country
- Worldwide
- How measured
- Estimate
- Year
- 2021
- Note
- 1 in 4 is 25 percent. The release gives the share as 1 in 4 of a projected 2.5 billion people for 2050.