Deafness in America

About 7.8 million Americans 15 year of age and older had difficulty hearing a normal conversation, including 1 million who were deaf in 2004, according to US Census Bureau. That puts the number of deaf in the US to be about 10% of the total population. An estimated 50-70,000 Americans under 18 are profoundly deaf. And it's estimated that 78 million Americans will have hearing loss in the next quarter century.