Hearing Disability Prevalence by U.S. State (ACS 2023)
Explore state-level estimates of hearing disability prevalence from the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS).
In 2023, an estimated 3.7% of the U.S. civilian, non-institutionalized population reported a hearing disability. That represents roughly 12.1 million people out of 331 million. Try this tool by disabilitystatistics.org to further explore ACS disability data.
Prevalence shows how common a condition is at a given time. In this dataset, prevalence is calculated as:
(number of people reporting a hearing disability ÷ total population) × 100. Rates are weighted to represent the entire civilian, non-institutionalized U.S. population.
The ACS defines disability across six functional areas: hearing, vision, cognition, ambulation, self-care, and independent living. A person is counted as having a disability if they report serious difficulty in any one of these categories.
This map specifically highlights the hearing domain, which identifies people who are deaf or who report serious difficulty hearing.
ACS data are estimates, not exact counts. Each value includes a margin of error (MOE) that indicates the level of uncertainty. Small differences between states should be interpreted cautiously if they fall within each other’s MOE.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2023 (Public Use Microdata Sample). Processed by the Cornell University Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability.
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Interactive U.S. map of hearing disability prevalence by state using 2023 ACS data.
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