INTERVIEW | DATA

What the numbers reveal—and what they leave unseen

Status of hearing loss

466M
2018

people living with disabling hearing loss

rapid growth
1.5B
2021

people living with some degree of hearing loss

430M required rehabilitation
700M+
2050

projected to require hearing rehabilitation

Extensive global data

The missing intersection
Hearing-loss data
Extensive
Deaf street vendors
Data scarce
Informal-work data
Extensive

Comparable global statistics for Deaf and hard-of-hearing street vendors are not established in the cited sources.

Status of street vendors

2.0B

workers are in informal employment worldwide

61.2%

of global employment is informal

Street vending sits within this much larger informal economy; the ILO figure is not a street-vendor count.

Extensive labour data

PROJECT FIELD OBSERVATION

≈10% observed in our field sample were Deaf vendors

This exploratory observation is not a population estimate. It signals a group that is visible in practice but largely absent from comparable global data.

One highlighted stall among ten, representing the project's approximate field observation
World Health Organization, NIDCD, UN-Habitat and International Labour Organization

Verified figures: WHO World Report on Hearing (2021); ILO informal-employment estimate (2018). Institutional logos retained from the original research board.