An article in the New England Journal of Medicine discusses illiteracy in the United States, pointing out that 12%, or roughly one in eight adult Americans have “below basic document literacy”, meaning that they cannot read transportation schedules, TV schedules, food labels, or other basic texts. 22% (one in 4.5), meanwhile, have “below basic quantative literacy”, which is to say that they have serious problems with maths.
This didn’t come as a great surprise to me, though, remembering a literacy campaign in Devon, UK, a few years back. Back then, local buses were filled with posters claiming that one in five Britons cannot read, and that one in four cannot count, and that something ought to be done about it.
It would be interesting to have some worldwide comparisons in literacy rates. Unfortunately, all that I have been able to find are ones that calculate very basic literacy skills, meaning that despite a significant pecentage of the population in countries like the UK and the US not being able to read much more than their names, the literacy rates of those countries are still reported as 99.9%.
