Cataracts are extremely common. Roughly 100 million people worldwide were living with cataracts as of 2021, up from about 42 million in 1990. That makes cataracts the single leading cause of blindness globally, ahead of every other eye condition including glaucoma, macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy.
In the United States alone, more than 3.8 million cataract surgeries are performed every year, making it one of the most frequently done procedures in all of medicine. If you’re wondering whether cataracts are something you’ll eventually deal with, the short answer is: most people will, if they live long enough.
How Prevalence Changes With Age
Cataracts are overwhelmingly a condition of aging. The lens of your eye gradually clouds over time, and this process accelerates after middle age. Data from the Beaver Dam Eye Study, one of the largest long-term studies on age-related eye disease, illustrates the jump clearly. Among people aged 43 to 54, only about 3% had developed the most common type of cataract (nuclear cataract). By age 75 and older, that figure climbed to 40%.
The pattern holds across all cataract types. Cortical cataracts, which start at the edges of the lens, went from about 2% in the younger group to nearly 22% in those 75 and older. Posterior subcapsular cataracts, which form at the back of the lens and tend to interfere with reading and bright-light vision more quickly, rose from 1.4% to about 7%.
By the time people reach their 80s, the majority have some degree of lens clouding, whether or not it has started affecting their vision enough to notice.
Which Type Is Most Common
Not all cataracts look or behave the same. There are three main types, and they develop in different parts of the lens.
- Nuclear cataracts form in the center of the lens and are the most frequent type overall. They develop slowly and can initially cause a temporary improvement in near vision (sometimes called “second sight”) before worsening. The incidence rate is roughly 11.3%.
- Cortical cataracts begin as white, wedge-shaped streaks on the outer edge of the lens and gradually extend inward. Their incidence rate is about 7.6%.
- Posterior subcapsular cataracts form near the back surface of the lens. They’re the least common of the three (about 2.6% incidence) but tend to progress faster and cause noticeable glare and reading difficulty earlier.
Many people develop more than one type simultaneously, especially as they get older.
Gender and Racial Differences
Women develop cataracts more often than men. Among white Americans 65 and older, roughly 46% of women had cataracts compared to 37% of men. Among Black Americans in the same age group, the rates were about 39% for women and 25% for men. Hormonal changes after menopause are thought to play a role in the higher rates among women, though the exact mechanism isn’t fully settled.
Black Americans have lower overall cataract prevalence than white Americans, but they are also significantly less likely to receive cataract surgery when they need it. In one Florida-based analysis, white patients had a surgery utilization rate of about 11%, while Black patients with cataracts received surgery at a rate of just under 7%. That gap means more people in that group are living with impaired vision that could be corrected.
Diabetes and Other Risk Factors
Diabetes is one of the strongest non-age risk factors. People with diabetes are two to five times more likely to develop cataracts, and they tend to develop them at a younger age. The numbers bear this out: the incidence rate in diabetic patients is about 20 per 1,000 person-years, compared to roughly 11 per 1,000 person-years in people without diabetes. High blood sugar accelerates chemical changes in the lens that promote clouding.
Other well-established risk factors include prolonged UV exposure, smoking, long-term use of corticosteroid medications, previous eye injuries, and heavy alcohol use. Some of these are modifiable, which means wearing sunglasses, managing blood sugar, and not smoking can meaningfully slow cataract development even if they can’t prevent it entirely.
Cataracts in Children and Infants
While cataracts are primarily an aging condition, they can occur at birth or during childhood. Congenital cataracts affect roughly 1 to 4 babies per 10,000 live births, depending on the population studied. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 children are born with congenital cataracts worldwide each year, and about 200,000 children globally are blind because of them.
Childhood cataracts can be caused by genetic conditions, infections during pregnancy (such as rubella), metabolic disorders, or trauma. In many cases, no specific cause is identified. Because a child’s visual system is still developing, early detection and treatment are especially important to prevent permanent vision loss.
How Cataracts Compare to Other Eye Conditions
Among the roughly 1 billion people worldwide with vision impairment, cataracts account for 94 million cases. That puts them ahead of uncorrected refractive errors (88 million), age-related macular degeneration (8 million), glaucoma (7.7 million), and diabetic retinopathy (3.9 million). The critical difference is that cataract-related vision loss is almost entirely reversible with surgery, while many of those other conditions cause permanent damage.
Cataract surgery replaces the clouded lens with an artificial one and restores clear vision in the vast majority of cases. Over 20 million of these procedures are performed worldwide each year, making it one of the most cost-effective medical interventions available. Most people return to normal activities within a few days, and serious complications are rare.
The global burden of cataracts has been growing steadily, not because the condition is becoming more common per person, but because populations are aging. The total number of people living with cataracts increased by 138% between 1990 and 2021. As life expectancy continues to rise, cataracts will remain one of the most widespread health conditions on the planet.