Facts and Figures about Deaf and Hard of Hearing

It's hard to arrive at a figure since deaf people have not been counted as a separate category in the U.S. Census since the 1930's. At best a number can only be estimated.

The Gallaudet Research Institute (GRI) published a study in 1971 which showed Deaf/HoH persons making up 8.6% of the US Population, 20,295,000 out of a total population of 235,688,000 at the time. Extrapolating those figures to remain constant when the US population hit 400,000,000+ it would mean there are presently 40,000,000 Deaf/HoH people in the USA today.

One difficulty in figuring out how many deaf people there are in the United States is that there are several different definitions of what 'deaf' is and what number one arrives at depends largely on the definition one used.

Some people define deaf as only those who cannot hear anything at all. Others define as those who can hear very little. And still others define it as those who can hear but not understand what they are hearing. Any person using one definition is going to end up with a far different number than someone who used the other two.

Some people only want to count the completely deaf; others wish to include those who are hard of hearing. It's a debate that has gone on for decades and doesn't appear to be ending any time soon.

What everyone CAN agree on is that there is a sizable number of people in the United States with special needs due to lack of hearing ability.

Numbers can be used to judge the severity of a problem and help arrive at an idea of how much resources are needed to meet it, so getting a census of the deaf population of the United States certainly has value.

One thing that may have held the deaf community back from receiving the resources that it needed in the past were disputes over who counted as being deaf and how many really fit the definition that was being adopted.

An under counting of the true number of Deaf/HoH people would lead to not enough resources being allocated to meet their needs. For this reason some people are advocating including Deaf/HoH people as a separate category in the next Census. Others oppose this idea, believing that singling out Deaf/HoH citizens into a special group would be demeaning.

However this issue is resolved, if it ever is, it's pretty safe to say many people agree with the idea that whatever amount of resources are presently being earmarked for the Deaf/HoH population in America, raising it would not be a bad idea.

Find more information about deafness and Deaf people at www.deafhub.com