vb960328.htm

ILLITERACY AND LOW LITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES

According to a strict definition of illiteracy last found in 1979 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 0.6 percent of U.S. residents over the age of 14 (approximately 822,000 persons) were unable to read or write a simple message in English or any other language. The 1993 National Adult Literacy Survey uses a new, vastly broader definition of "low literacy," which measures separately prose, document, and quantitative literacy. The survey found that 21 percent of U.S. residents over the age of 16 (approximately 40 million persons) perform in the lowest of five levels of prose literacy in English. Respondents were not tested in other languages or in braille. Tasks at the lowest level (Level 1) require readers to locate single pieces of information in simple texts. Tasks at Level 2 require readers to locate information in texts that include distracting information or plausible but incorrect information. Such tasks also require readers to make low-level inferences, compare and contrast information, and integrate pieces of information. Tasks at more advanced levels (Levels 3-5) require readers to perform similar but more difficult tasks.

The report discusses the complex relationships between literacy skills and social and economic characteristics. Older people, those who were bom in another country, and members of minority groups were overrepresented in Level 1. As might be expected, the study also found that persons with low literacy had low levels of education and were less likely to vote, read the newspaper, hold a job, or have income above the poverty line than were persons at higher literacy levels.

Surprisingly, most persons who performed at Level 1 did not perceive themselves as having inadequate literacy. In fact, only 29 percent of persons at Level 1 reported that they could not read English print well. The authors of the survey report suggest that some individuals, despite limited prose English literacy, are able to meet many of their own personal and occupational literacy needs.

Seven percent of respondents reported vision problems that made it difficult to read print," yet these respondents made up 19 percent of those scoring in Level 1. Of all persons reporting vision problems, most (54%) scored in Level 1, 22 percent scored in Level 2, 14 percent scored in Level 3, 4 percent scored in Level 4, and less than one percent scored in Level 5. (Respondents were asked to perform required tasks using print, not braille.)

For more information on the 1979 data, see "Ancestry and Language in the United States: November 1979," Current Population Reports, Series P-23, No. 116, available from the Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC 20233. For more information on the 1993 data, see the "National Adult Literacy Survey," which was prepared by the Educational Testing Service for the U.S. Department of Education and is available from the U.S. Government Printing Office Order Desk at 202-783-3238 (stock number 065-000-005883). For more information about the survey report, contact the Education Information Branch, U.S. Department of Education, 555 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20208; 800-424-1616.