Links With Poverty and Crime
In developed countries, the level of functional literacy of an individual is proportional to income level and risk of committing crime. For example, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics in the United States::
- Over 60% of adults in the US prison system read at or below the fourth grade level
- 85% of US juvenile inmates are functionally illiterate
- Adult inmates who received educational services while in prison had a 16% chance of returning to prison, as opposed to 70% for those who received no instruction.
- 43% of adults at the lowest level of literacy lived below the poverty line, as opposed to 4% of those with the highest levels of literacy.
According to begintoread.com :
- Two-thirds of students who cannot read proficiently by the fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare.
- Three out of four individuals who receive food stamps read on the two lowest levels of literacy.
- 16-to-19-year-old girls at the poverty line and below with below-average reading skills are 6 times more likely to have out-of-wedlock children than their more literate counterparts.
Read more about this topic: Functional Illiteracy
Famous quotes containing the words links, poverty and/or crime:
“Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
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To bear too tender or too firm a heart,
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