{"id":985,"date":"2021-12-29T06:38:17","date_gmt":"2021-12-29T05:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/?p=985"},"modified":"2021-12-29T06:38:17","modified_gmt":"2021-12-29T05:38:17","slug":"impact-of-low-literacy-levels-among-u-s-adults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/2021\/12\/29\/impact-of-low-literacy-levels-among-u-s-adults\/","title":{"rendered":"Impact of low literacy levels among U.S. adults"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;A new study by\u00a0<a class=\"color-link\" title=\"https:\/\/www.gallup.com\/home.aspx\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gallup.com\/home.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Gallup<\/a>\u00a0on behalf of the\u00a0<a class=\"color-link\" title=\"https:\/\/www.barbarabush.org\" href=\"https:\/\/www.barbarabush.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy<\/a>\u00a0finds that low levels of adult literacy could be costing the U.S. as much $2.2 trillion a year.<\/p>\n<p>According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old &#8211; about 130 million people &#8211; lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. That\u2019s a shocking number for several reasons, and its dollars and cents implications are enormous because literacy is correlated with several important outcomes such as personal income, employment levels, health, and overall economic growth.<\/p>\n<p>Commenting on the significance of the study,\u00a0<a class=\"color-link\" title=\"https:\/\/www.prnewswire.com\/news-releases\/new-economic-study-finds-the-us-could-be-losing-2-2-trillion-annually-due-to-low-adult-literacy-rates-301125978.html\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prnewswire.com\/news-releases\/new-economic-study-finds-the-us-could-be-losing-2-2-trillion-annually-due-to-low-adult-literacy-rates-301125978.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">British A. Robinson, president and CEO of the Barbara Bush Foundation<\/a>, said, &#8216;America\u2019s low literacy crisis is largely ignored, historically underfunded and woefully under-researched, despite being one of the great solvable problems of our time. We\u2019re proud to enrich the collective knowledge base with this first-of-its-kind study, documenting literacy\u2019s key role in equity and economic mobility in families, communities and our nation as a whole.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaeltnietzel\/2020\/09\/09\/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year\/?sh=1ebea3624c90\">https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaeltnietzel\/2020\/09\/09\/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year\/?sh=1ebea3624c90<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;A new study by\u00a0Gallup\u00a0on behalf of the\u00a0Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy\u00a0finds that low levels of adult literacy could be costing the U.S. as much $2.2 trillion a year. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old &#8211; about 130 million people &#8211; lack proficiency in literacy, reading below [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6906,9546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literacy-2","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":986,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/literacy-reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}