Chronic Pain Facts & Figures

Chronic Pain Facts & Figures

• One in five U.S. adults experience chronic pain, equal to over 50 million adults in the United States.* [1,2]

• Approximately 20 million of the total number of people who experience chronic pain in the U.S. have high impact chronic pain “that frequently limit[s] life or work activities” most days or everyday for three months or more.* [1]

• Women** comprise 21.7% of adults who experience chronic pain and 8.5% of adults who experience high impact chronic pain, in comparison to men who comprise 19.0% and 6.3%, respectively.* [1]

• Chronic pain is one of the leading and most costly causes of long-term disability in the U.S [3] and is rapidly increasing across all age, race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic (SES) demographics. [4]

• Chronic pain is one of the most common reasons adults seek medical care in the U.S. [2 ], with women,** rural populations, and people of low SES disproportionately affected. [1]

• Chronic pain is most prevalent in U.S. white non-Hispanic adults and second most prevalent in non-Hispanic Black adults. [1]

• It is estimated that chronic pain results in an annual cost of $600 billion to the U.S. [5] and $79.9 billion in lost wages. [2]

*These figures do not include children, people who are incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized, undocumented people, or active duty military personnel. The total number is likely much higher given these exclusions.

** Most studies unfortunately do not take into account that many people assigned female at birth are not “women” or do not exclusively identify as women, but that transmasc and non-binary people may also be disproportionately impacted by chronic pain.

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Sources

1 Zelaya, C., Dahlhamer, J., Lucas, J., & Connor, E. (2020, November 4). Products - Data Briefs - Number 390 - November 2020. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db390.htm.

2 “One in Five American Adults Experience Chronic Pain.” ScienceDaily, ScienceDaily, 20 Apr. 2021, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210420092901.htm.

3 Wu, A., March, L., Zheng, X., Huang, J., Wang, X., Zhao, J., Blyth, F. M., Smith, E., Buchbinder, R., & Hoy, D. (2020). Global low back pain prevalence and years lived with disability from 1990 to 2017: estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Annals of Translational Medicine, 8(6), 299–299. https://doi.org/10.21037/atm.2020.02.175.

4 Zajacova, A., Grol-Prokopczyk, H., & Zimmer, Z. (2021). Pain Trends Among American Adults, 2002–2018: Patterns, Disparities, and Correlates. Demography, 58(2), 711–738. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-8977691

5 Gaskin, D. J., & Richard, P. (2012). The economic cost of pain in the United States. Journal of Pain, 13, 715–724.)