Hearing Aid Use Lowest in Countries With Highest Reported Hearing Loss Levels

THURSDAY, Oct. 9, 2025 (HealthDay News) — There is considerable international variation in hearing loss and hearing aid use, with the regions with the highest levels of hearing loss having the lowest levels of hearing aid use, according to a study published online Oct. 2 in BMJ Global Health.

Anastasia Lam, Ph.D., from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and colleagues used Gateway to Global Ageing data and the South African National Income Dynamics Study to estimate the prevalence of self-reported hearing loss and hearing aid use for 28 countries. A total of 664,580 observations of individuals aged 50 years and older were included in the study.

The researchers found that hearing aid use was lowest for the four countries with the highest level of hearing loss (China, South Korea, Mexico, and Brazil [65, 39, 33, and 31 percent]), which was as low as 1 percent in China. In nearly all countries, men were more likely than women to report hearing loss, especially in regions with higher hearing aid use (United States of America, Northern/Western Europe); no gender difference was seen in China, South Korea, or South Africa. The prevalence of hearing loss and hearing aid use increased with age, while differences in gender generally decreased.

“Our results underscore the wide-ranging contribution of country and gender contexts in producing self-reports of hearing loss and hearing aid use,” the authors write. “Large international variation in prevalence, and gender differences therein, suggests complex processes at play.”

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