Adult Literacy in the United
States
What are the rates of
literacy in the United States?
Four in five U.S. adults (79
percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require
comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level
inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013).
In contrast, one in five U.S.
adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This
translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy
skills: 26.5 million at level 1 and 8.4 million below level 1, while 8.2
million could not participate in PIAAC’s background survey either because of a
language barrier or a cognitive or physical inability to be interviewed.
These adults who were unable
to participate are categorized as having low English literacy skills, as is
done in international reports (OECD 2013), although no direct assessment of
their skills is available.
Adults classified as below
level 1 may be considered functionally illiterate in English: i.e., unable to
successfully determine the meaning of sentences, read relatively short texts to
locate a single piece of information, or complete simple forms (OECD 2013)
What is the make-up of adults
with low English literacy skills by nativity status and race/ethnicity?
U.S.-born adults make up
two-thirds of adults with low levels of English literacy skills in the United
States. However, the non-U.S. born are over-represented among such low-skilled
adults.
Non U.S.-born adults comprise
34 percent of the population with low literacy skills, compared to 15 percent
of the total population (figure 2).
by nativity status: 2012 and 2014. FIGURE 2
White and Hispanic adults
make up the largest percentage of U.S. adults with low levels of English
literacy, 35 percent and 34 percent respectively
(figure 3).
By race/ethnicity and
nativity status, the largest percentage of those with low literacy skills are
White U.S.-born adults, who represent one third of such low-skilled population.
Hispanic adults born outside the United States make up about a quarter of such
low-skilled adults in the United States (figure 3).
Using the data from the Program
for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), this
Data Point summarizes the number of U.S. adults with low levels of English
literacy and describes how they differ by nativity status1 and race/ethnicity.
PIAAC is a large-scale
international2 study of working-age adults (ages 16–65) that assesses adult
skills in three domains (literacy, numeracy, and digital problem solving) and
collects information on adults’ education, work experience, and other
background characteristics. In the United States, when the study was conducted
in 2011–12 and 2013–14, respondents were first asked questions about their
background, with an option to be interviewed in English or Spanish, followed by
a skills assessment in English. Because the skills assessment was conducted
only in English, all U.S. PIAAC literacy results are for English literacy. READ
MORE >>
Adult
2019: Adult Literacy in the
United States, NCES 2019-179
2013: OECD Skills Outlook
2013: First Results-Survey of Adult Skills, OECD
2009: Literacy of
America's Least Literate Adults, NAAL
2003
2006: Literacy of America's
College Students, AIR
2007: Literacy in
Everyday Life, NAAL 2003
2003: National Assessment of
Adult Literacy, NAAL
2000: Programs for
Adults in Public Library Outlets, USDE, NCES
1992: National Adult Literacy
Survey, NALS
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