It’s been an established fact that hearing loss can impact one’s physical, psychological, and emotional health. It can affect the human experience when it interferes with family relationships, school performance and social connections. But it has only recently been documented that untreated hearing loss can affect one’s earning potential and furthermore can cost society millions of dollars in unrealized taxes!!!
In August of 2005 a study by Sergei Kochkin, published by the Better Hearing Institute, was conducted analyzing the impact of untreated hearing loss on household income.
The researchers compared 10 levels of hearing impaired adults with normal hearing adults to see how the severity of the loss (noted in the graph below as deciles) impacted income. The graph reveals that for every 10% increase in hearing loss there is a $1180 loss of earnings. Thus the most serious hearing impairments, in the 8-10 decile range, might expect to earn $12,000 less than someone with no loss of hearing or a mild loss (see decile 1)


So the next question raised by the researchers was whether using amplification would mitigate the income differential. And what they discovered was that while both treated and untreated hearing loss groups did have a reduction in income as their loss deteriorated, the loss was halved for people who consistently used hearing devices. See figure 2 below.





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