Imagine being a manufacturer of a product that nearly three members out of 10 in the target audience are unable to do much of anything with.

Printers inadvertently fit that description because of a widespread learning deficit called functional illiteracy—a disruptive and costly social phenomenon that is only getting worse.

People categorized as functionally illiterate can make little practical use of language in visual form. This means, for example, that they can’t fully grasp the meaning of printed words in anything more complex than brief sentences or simple signage.

As individuals, they lag far behind others in terms of employability and earning growth. In communities where functional illiteracy is prevalent, public safety and health and quality of life are likely to be compromised.

Functional illiteracy isn’t a character flaw to be denigrated—it’s a societal failure that tarnishes everyone with its negative outcomes. If anything about functional illiteracy is open to criticism, it’s how much less public attention it gets than a problem of its magnitude ought to receive.

Leveling Down

The most substantive data on functional illiteracy come from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), a study of adult cognitive skills and life experiences developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and conducted in the United States by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

PIAAC assesses the skills of working age adults (ages 16 to 65) in the domains of literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving. It tracks literacy across three categories of reading ability:

• Level 1, the lowest, comprises adults who can be considered at risk for difficulties using or comprehending print material. At best, they can perform simple tasks such as filling out short forms, but drawing inferences or combining multiple sources of text may be too difficult. Some adults below Level 1 may be functionally illiterate.
• Level 2 adults can read print and digital text, make simple inferences and comparisons, and navigate to key information in a digital environment. But more complex inferencing and evaluation with text-based documents may be too difficult for them.
• Level 3 readers have literacy skills that let them understand, interpret, and synthesize information across multiple, complex texts. They can evaluate the reliability of their written sources and infer sophisticated meanings and complex ideas from them.

PIAAC completed its most recent round of data collection between August 2022 and June 2023. The data revealed that from 2017 and 2023, overall average scores for U.S. adults declined in literacy and numeracy. This was evident in increases in the percentages of adults performing at the lowest level of proficiency, Level 1 or below, in both literacy and numeracy.

In literacy, the percentage at Level 1 or below increased from 19 to 28%. The increases were seen for both employed U.S. adults across all self-reported employment categories as well as for those out of the labor force.

That, according to PIAAC, is the national average. Its numbers on illiteracy in states and cities either mirror the broad finding or make it look conservative.

Ill at Ease in Illinois

The Illinois Policy Institute, an advocacy group, cites NCES data showing that one-fifth of Illinois adults are functionally illiterate and that 25% of adults in Cook County are in this category. This means, says the group, that they cannot understand the meaning of sentences, locate information on pages, or complete simple forms, all of which would affect their abilities to hold many jobs.

EdSource, a California journalism organization focused on education, says PIAAC data indicate that 28% of the state’s adults have such poor literacy in English that they struggle to do anything more complicated than filling out a basic form or reading a short text. California’s percentage is worse than any other state except New Mexico, where the estimated rate is 29%.

The Houston Mayor’s Office for Adult Literacy has determined that one in every three of Harris County adults are functionally illiterate, meaning they do not yet have the literacy skills they need to successfully perform their roles on the job, in their families, or in society.

It warns that low levels of adult literacy have profound impacts on the overall health and success of the community in terms of crime rates, health quality and civic participation, with a disproportionate effect on communities of color.

Data on the extent of functional illiteracy at the local level are readily available to anyone who is prepared to confront them.

Pins on a Map

NCES has posted a U.S. Skills Map with state and county indicators of adult literacy and numeracy. Based on PIAAC data, the map presents a searchable database of literacy and numeracy by county at Levels 1, 2, and 3. It also breaks out the statistics by age group and educational attainment.

A county comparisons feature presents side-by-side data summaries for any two counties either in the same state or in different ones.

The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy publishes a Literacy Gap Map that visualizes PIAAC scores on a county by county basis. It also offers downloadable state cards that snapshot the data on low literacy and its impact on equity and quality of life.

The harms done by impaired illiteracy in localities add up to a severe national problem—a low-visibility but high-risk set of circumstances.

The Bush Foundation asserts that 130 million Americans—54% of adults between the ages of 16 and 74 years old—read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

ProLiteracy, a foundation for adult education, counts 59 million adults as reading at or below PIAAC Level 1. Low literacy, the group says, costs the U.S. economy over $300 billion in lost earnings, lower workplace productivity, higher crime, and more government assistance.

Pernicious Pipeline

An even grimmer assessment comes from the National Literacy Institute, a coalition of literacy service providers, schools, and educators.

In its statistical review of literacy in 2022–2023, the organization reported that three out of five people in American prisons can’t read. It said that in order to determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests.

Warnings like these deserve to be taken seriously. But focusing on the numbers alone obscures the fact that functional illiteracy afflicts individuals—people whose whole lives have been hemmed in by their inability to decode letters and numbers at anything beyond the most basic level. Many have shown ingenuity in developing “faking skills” that let them use context and other techniques to guess the meaning of the text they are reading.

Even the use of the term “functional illiteracy” can be problematic, as a recent article in the journal Frontiers in Psychology points out. This is because the term risks stigmatizing people who struggle with reading, potentially reinforcing harmful stereotypes and marginalizing those who are already vulnerable.

“Nobody wants to be considered ‘illiterate,’ regardless of the adjective,” the writer of the article observes.

The most regrettable aspect of the situation is that responses to the crisis of functional illiteracy fall so far short of what is needed to solve it.

As the Bush Foundation notes, in counties where at least a quarter of the population have below basic literacy, there is a corresponding decline in health, economic, and educational outcomes. But few adults in need of literacy remediation receive services, and programs that do exist have long waiting lists.

$2.2T for the Taking

The frustration is compounded by the fact that eradicating illiteracy would have enormous economic benefits. Analysis cited by the Bush Foundation claims that getting all U.S. adults to at least a Level 3 of literacy proficiency would generate an additional $2.2 trillion in annual income for the country—10% of the gross domestic product.

Functional illiteracy may not be raising the kind of alarm it should in this country, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has failed to take notice.

Earlier this year, The Times of India analyzed the key factors it said are exacerbating literary deficit in the U.S. The article pointed out that internationally, the U.S. ranks 36th in literacy, “an alarming position given its economic power and educational influence.”

“A surge in the number of adults falling into the lowest literary categories is painting a paradoxical picture of the ‘land of opportunities,’” the article states. “This ranking is a stark reminder that the U.S. is falling behind in an area crucial for economic competitiveness and social well-being.”