According to the National Coalition for Literacy Adult Literacy 2009 Factsheet:
- There are 759 million adults, about 16% of the world’s population, who only have basic or below basic literacy levels in their native languages.
- Two-thirds of the world’s lowest literate adults were women.
- In the U.S., 63 million adults, or 29% of the county’s adult population, don’t read well enough to understand a newspaper story written at the eighth grade level. An additional 30 million adults, or 14% of the adults in the U.S., can only read at a fifth grade level or lower.
- 43% of adults with the lowest literacy rates in the U.S. live in poverty.
- More than 65% of all state and federal corrections inmates can be classified as low literate,
- Low literacy’s effects cost the U.S. $225 billion or more each year in non-productivity in the workforce, crime and loss of tax revenue due to unemployment.