Glaucoma affects about 80.5 million people worldwide and roughly 4.2 million Americans. Among adults over 40, about 2.8% have the most common form globally, and the rate climbs steeply with age. By your early 80s, over 7% of people have it. It is one of the leading causes of irreversible blindness in the world, responsible for an estimated 7.7 million cases of blindness or severe vision impairment.
Prevalence by Age
Glaucoma is rare before middle age and becomes dramatically more common with each passing decade. CDC data from 2022 lays out the trajectory clearly for Americans:
- Ages 40 to 44: 0.36%
- Ages 50 to 54: about 1%
- Ages 60 to 64: 2.14%
- Ages 70 to 74: 4.63%
- Ages 80 to 84: 7.11%
- Ages 90 to 94: 8.81%
The pattern is consistent: your risk roughly doubles every decade after 40. The largest group of Americans living with glaucoma, about 2.46 million people, falls in the 65 to 84 age range. Another 546,000 are 85 or older. If you’re in your 40s wondering whether this is something to worry about right now, the odds are low. If you’re in your 60s or beyond, it becomes a meaningful possibility worth screening for.
Who Is Most at Risk
Race and ethnicity significantly affect glaucoma risk, even after accounting for age differences between populations. Non-Hispanic Black adults have a glaucoma prevalence of 3.15%, compared to 1.42% for non-Hispanic white adults. That makes Black adults roughly twice as likely to develop glaucoma overall. The gap widens further when looking specifically at glaucoma that actively impairs vision: Black adults are nearly three times as likely to have vision-affecting glaucoma (1.20% vs. 0.48%).
Hispanic adults and those of other racial backgrounds fall in between, with a prevalence of about 1.56%. The difference between these groups and white adults is modest and statistically uncertain, so the clearest disparity is between Black and white populations.
These differences likely reflect a combination of genetic susceptibility, differences in access to eye care, and the fact that glaucoma tends to develop earlier and progress more aggressively in people of African descent.
How Rates Vary Around the World
The most common type, open-angle glaucoma, is most prevalent in Africa, where about 4.2% of people over 40 are affected. Latin America (3.2%) and Japan (3.3%) also have high rates. Europe sits around 2%, and China and Southeast Asia are lower, between 1.2% and 1.4%.
There’s a second, less common form called angle-closure glaucoma, and it follows a completely different geographic pattern. It is most common in China and Southeast Asia, where about 1.2% of people over 40 are affected, compared to just 0.25% in Europe and 0.16% in Africa. Over 80% of all angle-closure glaucoma cases occur in Asia. The two types together mean that glaucoma touches virtually every population on earth, but the specific form varies by region and ancestry.
Half of Cases Go Undiagnosed
One of the most important things to understand about glaucoma prevalence is that the numbers likely undercount the real burden. Population studies consistently find that about half of all people with glaucoma don’t know they have it. This holds true even in developed countries with good healthcare access.
The reason is straightforward: glaucoma typically causes no pain and no noticeable vision changes in its early stages. It damages peripheral vision first, and the brain compensates remarkably well for gradual loss around the edges of your visual field. By the time most people notice something is wrong, significant and irreversible nerve damage has already occurred. This is why routine eye exams that include pressure checks and optic nerve evaluation matter so much, particularly after age 40.
The Numbers Are Growing
Glaucoma is becoming more common, driven by aging populations worldwide. The global count of people with open-angle glaucoma is projected to rise from 80.5 million in 2024 to roughly 187 million by 2060. When factoring in cases caused by severe nearsightedness, which is also increasing globally, the total could reach 193 million.
An earlier projection estimated 111.8 million people with all forms of glaucoma by 2040. The increase will disproportionately affect Asia and Africa, where populations are growing and aging fastest. In practical terms, this means glaucoma screening and treatment will become an even larger public health priority in the coming decades, and the proportion of preventable blindness linked to glaucoma will likely grow if detection rates don’t improve.
How Common Is Vision Loss From Glaucoma
Not everyone with glaucoma goes blind. Of the 4.22 million Americans living with glaucoma, about 1.5 million have vision-affecting glaucoma, meaning the disease has progressed enough to measurably impair their sight. That’s roughly one in three people with the diagnosis. Globally, the WHO estimates 7.7 million people have blindness or severe vision impairment from glaucoma, making it the fourth leading cause of blindness after cataracts, uncorrected refractive errors, and age-related macular degeneration.
The distinction between having glaucoma and losing vision to it is important. With early detection and consistent treatment (usually daily eye drops or a laser procedure to lower eye pressure), most people with glaucoma keep functional vision for life. The people who go blind from it are overwhelmingly those who were diagnosed late or couldn’t maintain treatment. That’s what makes the 50% undiagnosed figure so consequential: the disease is very treatable, but only if someone catches it.