Prevalence
In the United States, according to Business magazine, an estimated 15 million functionally illiterate adults held jobs at the beginning of the 21st century. The American Council of Life Insurers reported that 75% of the Fortune 500 companies provide some level of remedial training for their workers. All over the U.S.A. 30 million (14% of adults) are unable to perform simple and everyday literacy activities.
The National Center for Education Statistics provides more detail. Literacy is broken down into three parameters: prose, document, and quantitative literacy. Each parameter has four levels: below basic, basic, intermediate, and proficient. For prose literacy, for example, a below basic level of literacy means that a person can look at a short piece of text to get a small piece of uncomplicated information, while a person who is below basic in quantitative literacy would be able to do simple addition. In the US, 14% of the adult population is at the "below basic" level for prose literacy; 12% are at the "below basic" level for document literacy; and 22% are at that level for quantitative literacy. Only 13% of the population is proficient in these three areas—able to compare viewpoints in two editorials; interpret a table about blood pressure, age, and physical activity; or compute and compare the cost per ounce of food items.
The UK government's Department for Education reported in 2006 that 47% of school children left school at age 16 without having achieved a basic level in functional mathematics, and 42% fail to achieve a basic level of functional English. Every year, 100,000 pupils leave school functionally illiterate in the UK.
The 2009 Human Development Report used the percentage of people lacking functional literacy skills as one of the variables to calculate the Human Poverty Index in developed countries.
| Country | People lacking functional literacy skills (% aged 16–65) 1994–2003 |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Italy | 47.0 | |
| Mexico | 43.2 | |
| Ireland | 22.6 | |
| United Kingdom | 21.8 | |
| United States | 20.0 | |
| France | 19.8 | |
| Belgium | 18.4 | Flanders only. |
| New Zealand | 18.4 | |
| Australia | 17.0 | |
| Switzerland | 15.9 | |
| Canada | 14.6 | |
| Germany | 14.4 | |
| Netherlands | 10.5 | |
| Finland | 10.4 | |
| Denmark | 9.6 | |
| Norway | 7.9 | |
| Sweden | 7.5 |
Read more about this topic: Functional Illiteracy
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