IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v80y2025i3p1522-1530..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Educational Disparities in Age-Related Hearing Loss and Hearing Aid Use Across Age, Gender, and European Region

Author

Listed:
  • Donata Stonkute
  • Yana Vierboom

Abstract

ObjectivesAffecting 1 in 5 adults in Europe, hearing loss (HL) is linked to adverse health outcomes, including dementia. We aim to investigate educational inequalities in hearing health in Europe and how these inequalities change with age, gender, and region.MethodsUtilizing 2004–2020 data from the Harmonized Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a representative sample of Europeans aged 50 and older, we analyze: (1) age-standardized prevalence of HL and hearing aid (HA) use among eligible individuals and (2) educational inequalities therein using the Relative Index of Inequality across age, gender, and European regions.ResultsThe prevalence of self-reported HL increases with age, is greater among men, and is consistently higher among those with lower levels of education. At age 50–64, particularly in Southern and Eastern Europe, low-educated women experience more than 3 times the risk of HL compared to highly educated women. These inequalities diminish as women age. Northern Europe is a front-runner in meeting HA needs. Southern and Eastern Europe lag behind, with less than 2 in 10 individuals eligible for HAs utilizing them.DiscussionSubstantial variations in the educational gradient of hearing health across age, gender, and European regions underscore the importance of targeting specific subpopulations in efforts to mitigate health inequalities. Of particular concern is the regional discrepancy between the prevalence of HL and the use of HAs. The example of Northern Europe suggests that there is unused potential to improve healthy aging in Europe through enhanced access to HAs.

Suggested Citation

  • Donata Stonkute & Yana Vierboom, 2025. "Educational Disparities in Age-Related Hearing Loss and Hearing Aid Use Across Age, Gender, and European Region," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 80(3), pages 1522-1530.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:80:y:2025:i:3:p:1522-1530.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbae202
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:80:y:2025:i:3:p:1522-1530.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.