Only 25% of Americans have read more than ten books in the last year, according to Pew Research Center. photo by Evelyn Jackson
Many claim that America is experiencing an unprecedented literacy crisis, but what does the data say?
The inspiration for this article and many of the sources came from this video.
As someone who is interested in books and the literary world in general, I’ve recently seen a number of opinion videos and thinkpieces about the supposed American literary crisis. Various sources will claim that anywhere from 20 to 50% percent of adults are illiterate, or that over half of US adults have a below–6th grade reading level (a term that always goes undefined). Some sources will use the term “functionally illiterate” instead of “illiterate” to specifically refer to people who are able to read, but who cannot fully understand a given text, though others simply use literacy as a broad term to refer to multiple ideas. These are concerning ideas; in a society where people cannot read—or, at least, where they cannot fully engage with the things they are reading—how can people trust that the best decisions are being made?
The issue comes when one examines where most of these claims are getting their data from. When the articles cite their sources (and not all of them do), they often cite data from an assessment called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies that was collected by the Department of Education between 2012 and 2017, with new data from 2023 being released recently. The PIAAC defined literacy as “accessing, understanding, evaluating and reflecting on written texts in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society,” and tested participants on their ability to access, understand, and evaluate texts, then assigned them proficiency levels based on their scores. In 2012, 18% of participants scored level one or below, 33% scored level two, and 50% scored level three or above. In 2023, 28% scored level one of below, 29% scored level two, and 44% scored level three or above.
This decline might seem troubling, but crucially, the PIAAC never actually defines any of these levels as being illiterate. Later sources that use the PIAAC data will go on to claim that those at or below level one, or even those below level three, are illiterate. However, by the most commonly accepted definitions of literacy, even these scorers would still be literate, as “most adults below Level 1 are able to process meaning at the sentence level” and “are also able to read short, simple paragraphs and, at certain points in the text, tell which of two words makes the sentence meaningful and consistent with the rest of the passage.” It’s also important to note that the PIAAC test was only administered in English, even though participants were able to fill out the background survey in Spanish, meaning that it’s possible that there were participants who scored low, not because of any issues with literacy, but because they were not yet fluent in English. Additionally, fewer than 4000 tests were actually completed, leaving us with a dataset that, while useful in some circumstances, is extremely limited in its ability to show broad population trends in regards to literacy.
So, why are so many people using this source to claim that the United States is experiencing a literacy crisis? Certainly, many adults struggle with critical thinking skills and analysis of data (and, looking at how the PIAAC data is so often misrepresented, perhaps data literacy is a more important phenomena to examine), but why is there such hysteria around this alleged literacy crisis? Bear with me, but I think this connects to the other discussions around the way reading in general is becoming less intellectual, and also the increase in women reading and writing books.
I’ve seen many discussions about how new releases are worse, have poor writing quality, or are just less challenging than books released in previous decades. I’m sure some of this is related to a general nostalgia for the past, a feeling that the past was always better, even though most of the popular books released in the last hundred years were exactly the same quality as the popular books being released today. I also have a theory that, since now the majority of readers and writers are women, reading is seen as less intellectual or less important in life. There’s a term called male flight, which, similar to the concept of white flight, explains the phenomenon where one group (in this case, men) rapidly leave an area when another group (in this case, women) begins to enter it. In other words, male flight is when men rapidly leave an industry, profession, or just an area when women begin to engage with it, leaving it to be female-dominated and often lose prestige in the process. In extreme cases, such as people who earn Bachelor’s degrees in health professional sciences, this disparity can be 80-20. So, possibly the hysteria around the literacy crisis is related to society’s disdain for women and their interests. Because women now make up the majority of readers, reading itself is seen as less prestigious, less impressive, and those who do read are scrutinized.
Now, literacy and critical thinking are crucial skills for every adult, and any decrease in the proficiency of these skills should be remedied. But understanding data and questioning what you hear are also important things to do, and fearmongering or spreading overexaggerated claims about a genuine issue are not the solution.
