What percent of adults are illiterate?

21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022. 54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level. 21% of Americans 18 and older are illiterate in 2022. Low literacy rates end up costing Americans up to $2.2 trillion every year.

What percentage of adults in the world are illiterate?

The global literacy rate for all people aged 15 and above is 86.3%.

What is the illiteracy rate for adults?

Twenty-one percent, or 43 million US adults, find it difficult to compare and contrast information, paraphrase, or make low-level inferences, and, according to the PIAAC survey, have low literacy skills.

Do 54% of adults lack literacy?

130 million Americans—54% of adults between the ages of 16 and 74 years old—lack proficiency in literacy, essentially reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

What is the most illiterate state?

The states with the lowest literacy rates are New Mexico, California, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Nevada, New York, Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

Why 36 million American adults can't read enough to work — and how to help them

Why is US literacy so low?

Hispanics, older people, and incarcerated people are more likely to be low literate than other US adults. Major factors influencing literacy development include education, socioeconomic status, learning English as a second language, learning disabilities, and crime.

What is the least educated state in America?

Overall, 90.3% of Americans over the age of 25 had graduated from high school in 2021, with the highest level found in the state of Massachusetts at 96.1% and the lowest in the state of California at 84.4%.

Why is illiteracy so high in the US?

Poverty plays a large role in whether children develop literacy skills during their early years. Some 22% of children in the U.S. live in poverty, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Some 43% of adults living in poverty have low literacy levels.

What percent of Americans can't read?

Nationwide, on average, 79% of U.S. adults are literate in 2022. 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022. 54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level. 21% of Americans 18 and older are illiterate in 2022.

What percentage of US adults are functionally illiterate?

In 2019, the National Center for Educational Statistics reported that 4.1% of US adults had literacy abilities below level 1, defined as "unable to successfully determine the meaning of sentences, read relatively short texts to locate a single piece of information, or complete simple forms", and could be classified as ...

How can you tell if someone is illiterate?

What percentage of China is illiterate?

Literacy Rate in China (2018-2021, %)

The literacy rate reached 99.83% in 2021. Between 2015 to 2021, the literacy rate of China grew by 0.106%. On a year-on-year basis, the literacy rate increased by 0.018% in 2021. Literacy is defined by the percentage of the literate population of a particular age group.

Can illiterate adults learn to read?

After 14 weeks of training with a new, optimized, literacy course based on cognitive research, six out of eight participants became able to read words they had never encountered, hence demonstrating that they were definitely engaged in decoding processes that allow autonomous reading.

Is the illiteracy rate rising?

In the past five decades, the global literacy rate among adults has grown from 67 percent in 1976 to 87.01 percent in 2022. In 1976, males had a literacy rate of 76 percent, compared to a rate of 58 percent among females. This difference of over 17 percent in 1976 has fallen to just seven percent in 2020.

Do 54% of Americans read below 6th grade level?

This appears to be true in the United States. “About 130 million adults in the U.S. have low literacy skills according to a Gallup analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education. This means more than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 (54%) read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.”

What percent of high school graduates are illiterate?

According to a recent study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, 32 million of American adults are illiterate, 21 percent read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates are functionally illiterate, which means they can't read well enough to manage daily living and perform tasks required ...

Which state has the lowest literacy rate?

Bihar is the least literate state in India with a literacy rate of 63.82%.

Why are people becoming illiterate?

Lack of books at home and lack of stimulation as to the importance of reading; Doing badly at or dropping out of school—many have not completed high school; Difficult living conditions, including poverty; Learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.

Is illiteracy a disability?

Illiteracy is not considered to be a medical condition by the Social Security administration. It is considered to be a level of education. Therefore, a claimant cannot draw disability on the basis of illiteracy, alone.

What are the 5 levels of literacy?

The five stages of literacy development include emergent literacy, alphabetic fluency, words and patterns, intermediate reading, and advanced reading.

What state is #1 in education?

The full 2023 ALEC Index of State Education Freedom is available here. In addition to today's recognition, Florida ranked number one in the nation for education by U.S. News & World Report and number one on the Heritage Foundation Education Freedom report card.