The Greeks Became Literate Again During the Ninth Century Bce by Adopting

Literacy is a key skill and a fundamental measure of a population'due south education. In this entry we talk over historical trends, as well as recent developments in literacy.

From a historical perspective, literacy levels for the world population have risen drastically in the concluding couple of centuries. While but 12% of the people in the world could read and write in 1820, today the share has reversed: only fourteen% of the world population, in 2016, remained illiterate. Over the last 65 years the global literacy rate increased by 4% every 5 years – from 42% in 1960 to 86% in 2015.¹

Despite large improvements in the expansion of basic education, and the continuous reduction of educational activity inequalities, there are substantial challenges ahead. The poorest countries in the world, where basic didactics is well-nigh likely to be a binding constraint for evolution, notwithstanding take very large segments of the population who are illiterate. In Niger, for case, the literacy rate of the youth (15-24 years) is only 36.5%.

All our charts on Literacy

Global literacy today

Of the world population older than 15 years 86% are literate. This interactive map shows how the literacy rates varies betwixt countries around the earth.

In many countries more than 95% have basic literacy skills. Literacy skills of the majority of the population is a mod achievement as we show below.

Globally nonetheless, big inequalities remain, notably between sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world. In Burkina Faso, Niger and South Sudan – the African countries at the bottom of the rank – literacy rates are still beneath 30%.

Historical modify in literacy

Global literacy has grown substantially in the last two centuries

While the earliest forms of written communication date back to about 3,500-iii,000 BCE, literacy remained for centuries a very restricted technology closely associated with the practice of ability. It was only until the Centre Ages that book product started growing and literacy amid the general population slowly started condign important in the Western World.^two In fact, while the ambition of universal literacy in Europe was a fundamental reform born from the Enlightenment, information technology took centuries for information technology to happen. It was only in the 19th and 20th centuries that rates of literacy approached universality in early-industrialized countries.

The following visualization presents estimates of globe literacy for the menstruation 1800-2016. As we tin come across, literacy rates grew constantly but rather slowly until the beginning of the twentieth century. And the rate of growth really climbed after the middle of the 20th century, when the expansion of bones instruction became a global priority. You lot can read more than most the expansion of education systems around the world in our entry on Financing Education.

When did literacy showtime increasing in Europe?

The following visualization shows the spread of literacy in Europe since the 15th century, based on estimates from Buringh and Van Zanden (2009).³

Equally it can be seen, the rise levels of education in Europe foreshadowed the emergence of mod societies.

Particularly fast improvements in literacy took identify across Northwest Europe in the menstruation 1600-1800. As nosotros discuss beneath, widespread literacy is considered a legacy of the Age of Enlightenment.

The ambition of universal literacy in Europe was a reform born of the Enlightenment

This chart shows historical estimates of literacy in England over the last v centuries.

The historical estimates are based on the percentage of men women who could sign documents, a very bones definition of literacy that is often used in historical research on education.⁴

The first observations refer to men and women in the diocese of Norwich, which lies to the Northeast of London. Here, the majority of men (61%) were unable to write their name in the late 16th century; for women it was much lower.

Past 1840 two-thirds of men and virtually half of women were literate in England. The expansion of educational activity led to a reduction in education gender inequality. Towards the end of the 19th century the share had increased to almost three-quarters for both genders.

Every bit the center of the Industrial Revolution and one of the kickoff countries that established democratic institutions, England was in important aspects the center of the development of modernity.

The data shows that improvements in literacy preceded the Industrial Revolution and in many ways the ascent of living standards became only possible thank you to an increasingly ameliorate educated public. Economic growth is possible when we better understand how to produce the things nosotros need, and translate these insights into technological improvements that allow us to produce them more efficiently. Both the development of new technologies (innovation) and their utilize in production relied on a much better-educated population.

Widespread school instruction and even bones skills like literacy are a very recent achievement that was enabled and at the same fourth dimension required by the progress accomplished in contempo generations.

Literacy and admission to education take increased around the world

The visualization shows, in ii panels, a side-by-side comparing of long-term trends in school attendance and literacy.

We can come across that in 1870 only i in four people in the world attended schoolhouse, and this meant that but one in five were able to read. And global inequalities in access to didactics were very large.

Today, in contrast, the global estimates of literacy and school omnipresence are above 80%, and the inequality betwixt world regions – while still existing – is much lower.

We can see that ii centuries ago only a small aristocracy of the world population had the ability to read and write – the all-time approximate is that 12% of the globe population was literate. Over the course of the 19th century global literacy more than doubled. And over the course of the 20th century the globe accomplished rapid progress in pedagogy. More than than iv out of five people are now able to read. Young generations are better educated than ever before.

In the U.s., the expansion of literacy helped reduce within-country inequalities

The expansion of literacy in early-industrialized countries helped reduce inside-country inequalities. In the preceding visualization we showed that England virtually closed literacy gender gaps past 1900. Here we provide evidence of literacy gaps across races in the Usa.

The following visualization shows illiteracy rates by race for the flow 1870-1979. As nosotros can see, in society to reach almost universal levels of literacy, the The states had to shut the race gap. This was somewhen achieved effectually 1980.

Percent of persons xiv years one-time and over in the US who were illiterate past race, 1870-1979 – Our World in Information, with data from NCES^v

Latin America has made huge improvements in literacy in the last century

Equally pointed out above, Europe pioneered the expansion of bones education – but global literacy rates only started actually climbing in the second half of the 20th century, when the expansion of bones education became a global priority. Here we nowadays evidence of of import recent achievements in Latin America, where literacy has dramatically increased in the past century.

Equally it can be seen, many nations have gained 40-50 per centum points in literacy during this menses.

Despite these improvements, still, in that location is nonetheless a broad disparity between nations. Here yous can meet that, at the plow of the 21st century, half of the population in poor countries such as Republic of haiti remains illiterate. This motivates the next visualization, where we discuss cross-country heterogeneity in more detail.

Literacy around the earth today

• Literacy by generation
• Literacy by sex

Literacy by generation

To assess the extent to which progress can be expected in the years to come, information technology is convenient to break down literacy estimates past age groups. The following map, using data from UNESCO, shows such estimates for most countries in the world.

As it tin be seen, in the majority of nations in that location is a large difference in literacy rates across generations (you tin change the map to show literacy rates for different groups past clicking on the corresponding buttons at the top).

These big differences beyond generations point to a global trend: the high literacy rate among the youth indicates that as fourth dimension passes, the literacy rate for the overall population will continue to increase.

Earth maps of the literacy rate past age grouping⁶

Northern Africa and the Middle East accept drastically improved literacy in merely one generation

We highlighted above the fact that well-nigh low and middle income countries feature large differences in literacy rates beyond generations. The visualization shows specifically how remarkably large these differences are in Northern Africa and the Centre Eastward. Using UNESCO data, these maps bear witness that in many countries in these regions, only less than a third of the older generation is literate – while in contrast, more than xc% of the younger generation is literate.

The scatter plot emphasises the indicate already fabricated. As you can see, younger generations are more than likely to exist literate than older generations around the world. And in some countries the gaps are dramatic. In Algeria, for example, the literacy charge per unit amid the youth (15-24 years) is close to 97%; while it is 28% among the older population (65+ years).

In the chart you can use the slider at the bottom to check how these generational gaps have been changing in recent decades. You tin can see that throughout Africa the changes have been mainly horizontal (i.e. gaps have been widening every bit in that location have been radical recent improvements specifically benefiting the younger population). This is in dissimilarity to richer regions, such as Europe, where the expansion of teaching started before and as a consequence changes accept been mainly vertical (e.g. in Portugal the literacy rate amidst the youth was already high in 1980; so continued pedagogy expansion has meant that literacy rates are today almost equally loftier across the unabridged Portuguese population).

Literacy by sex

The visualization shows that peculiarly in many poorer countries the literacy charge per unit for young women is lower than the rate for young men.

This chart shows the literacy rate by sex over time.
This visualization shows the ratio of the literacy rate betwixt young women and men around the world.

Numeracy

Increasing numeracy skills over the long run

Numeracy is the ability to understand and work with numbers. The visualization shows how this basic power became more common in populations around the earth based on a very bones definition of numeracy, the power to correctly country 1's own age.

Numeracy skills today

Compared to the information on literacy we take less information on numeracy skills in the world today. Some data comes from PIAAC, the OECD's survey of the skills of adults. A earth map of these scores can be plant here.

The scatter plot shows how adults in OECD countries scored in the literacy and numeracy dimension. We see that the two aspects are closely correlated, those countries that have high literacy also have loftier numeracy.

PIAAC is merely available for the very contempo past, but information technology can still give u.s. some insights of how numeracy skills in the world have inverse. If we compare the numeracy scores of the young cohort with the older accomplice in a scatterplot we find that in almost countries numeracy skills have recently increased.

Measurement today

Common methods and data sources

In the chart we present a breakdown of UNESCO literacy estimates, showing the principal methodologies used, and how these take inverse over fourth dimension. (To explore changes across time use the slider underneath the map.)

The breakdown covers iv categories: self-reported literacy alleged directly by individuals, self-reported literacy declared past the head of the household, tested literacy from proficiency examinations, and indirect estimation or extrapolation.

In nearly cases, the categories roofing 'self-reports' (green and orange) represent to estimates of literacy that rely on answers provided to a simple yes/no question asking people if they can read and write.

The category 'indirect estimation' (black) corresponds mainly to estimates that rely on indirect evidence from educational attainment, unremarkably based on the highest degree of completed education.

In this table yous detect details regarding all literacy definitions and sources, state past country, and how we categorised them for the purpose of this chart.

This chart is telling us that:

• In that location is substantial cross-land variation, with recent estimates covering all 4 measurement methods.
• There is variation inside countries across time (e.g. United mexican states switches between self-reports and extrapolation).
• The number of countries that base their estimates on self-reports and testing is increasing.

Some other way to dissect the aforementioned data, is to allocate literacy estimates according to the type of measurement musical instrument used to collect the relevant information. In the side by side chart we explore this, splitting estimates into three categories: sampling, including information from literacy tests and household surveys; demography data; and other instruments (e.one thousand. administrative data on schoolhouse enrollment).

Here we tin see that most countries employ sampling instruments (coded as 'surveys' in the map), although in the past census data was more than mutual. Literacy surveys have the potential of being more accurate – when the sampling is done correctly – because they permit for more specific and detailed measurement than curt and generic questions in population censuses.

Data quality: Challenges and limitations

As mentioned above, contempo data on literacy is often based on a single question included in national population censuses or household surveys presented to respondents above a sure age, where literacy skills are cocky-reported. The question is often phrased as "can you read and write?". These self-reports of literacy skills have several limitations:

• Simple questions such as "tin you read and write?" frame literacy as a skill y'all either possess or do not when, in reality, literacy is a multi-dimensional skill that exists on a continuum.
• Self-reports are subjective, in that the question is dependent on what each individual understands by "reading" and "writing". The course of a word may be familiar enough for a respondent to call up its sound or meaning without really 'reading' it. Similarly, when writing out ane's name to convey written ability, this can exist accomplished by 'cartoon' a familiar shape rather than writing in an effort to produce a written text with meaning.
• In many cases surveys ask just one individual to study literacy on behalf of the entire household. This indirect reporting potentially introduces further noise, in particular when information technology comes to estimating literacy among women and children, since these groups are less often considered 'caput of household' in the surveys.

Similarly, inferring literacy from data on educational attainment is also problematic, since schooling does not produce literacy in the same style everywhere: Proficiency tests show that in many low-income countries, a big fraction of second-grade main-school students cannot read a unmarried word of a curt text; and for very few people in these countries going to school for four or v years guarantees bones literacy.

Even at a conceptual level there is lack of consensus – national definitions of literacy that are based on educational attainment vary substantially from country to land. For instance, in Greece people are considered literate if they have finished half-dozen years of principal education; while in Paraguay yous qualify as literate if you lot have completed 2 years of principal schoolhouse.^vii

New perspectives through standardized literacy tests

Given the limitations of cocky-reported or indirectly inferred literacy estimates, efforts are existence fabricated at both national and international levels to conduct standardized literacy tests to appraise proficiency in a systematic manner.

In detail, large cross-country assessment surveys have been developed to overcome the challenges of producing comparable literacy data. Two important examples are the Program for the International Assessment of Developed Competencies (PIAAC), which is a test used for measuring literacy by and large in rich countries; and the Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme (LAMP), which is a household assessment aimed at measuring literacy skills in developing countries, while remaining comparable across countries, languages, and scripts.⁸

The LAMP tests have simply recently been field tested in four countries: Jordan, Mongolia, Palestine, and Paraguay. The PIAAC tests, on the other paw, have been administered in about thirty countries, and the results are shown in the chart.^ix

We only accept these tests for a few countries, but we tin still come across that at that place is an overall positive correlation. Moreover, nosotros see that there is substantial variation in scores even for countries with identical and near perfect literacy rates (e.g. Japan vs Italy). This confirms the fact that PIAAC tests capture a related, only broader concept of literacy.

Reconstructing estimates from the past

Census data

The UNESCO definition of "people who can, with understanding, read and write a short, unproblematic statement on their everyday life", started being recorded in demography information from the stop of the 19th century onwards. Hence, despite variation on the types of questions and census instruments used, these historical census data remain the best source of data on literacy for the period prior 1990.

The longest series attempting to reconstruct literacy estimates from historical census data is provided in the OECD report "How Was Life? Global Well-being since 1820", published in 2014. This is the source used in the kickoff chart in this blog post for the period 1800 to 1990.¹⁰

How accurate are these UNESCO estimates?

The evidence suggests that the narrow concept of literacy measured in early census data provides an imperfect, yet informative account of literacy skills. The nautical chart shows a good example: Every bit we tin can see, already in 1947, census estimates from the US correlate strongly with educational attainment, as one would await.

Importantly, the correlation between educational attainment and literacy also holds beyond countries and over time. The next chart shows this by plotting changes in literacy rates and average years of schooling. Each country in this chart is represented by a line, where the beginning and ending points correspond to the first and last available observation of these two variables over the period 1970-2010. (As we mention above, earlier 1990 almost all observations correspond to demography data.)

Every bit we can see, literacy rates tend to be much college in countries where people tend to accept more years of education; and every bit boilerplate years of education go up in a state, literacy rates besides go upwardly.

Countries with high literacy rates also tend to have higher results in the bones literacy tests included in the DHS surveys (this is a test that requires survey respondents to read a judgement showed to them). As we tin can see in the chart, there is manifestly noise, merely these 2 variables are closely related.

Other historical sources

When demography information is not available, a common method used to estimate literacy is to calculate the share of people who could sign official documents (east.g. courtroom documents, marriage certificates, etc).¹¹

As the researcher Jeremiah Dittmar explains, this approach only gives a lower bound of the estimates because the number of people who could read was higher than the number who could write.

Indeed, other methods have been proposed, in social club to rely on historical estimates of people who could read. For example, researchers Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten van Zanden deduce literacy rates from estimated per capita book consumption. ¹² As Buringh and Van Zanden bear witness, their estimates based on book consumption are different, but nevertheless fairly close to alternative estimates based on signed documents.

Data Sources

CIA Factbook

• Data: Literacy rate for the entire population
• Geographical coverage: Global – by country
• Time span: 2011 or most contempo earlier estimate (in some cases going dorsum several decades)
• Bachelor here

UNESCO

• Data: Literacy rate (for youths (15-24), adults (fifteen+) and the elderly population (65+))
• Geographical coverage: Global – past country
• Time span: Since 1975 – scattered and far from almanac data
• Bachelor at: Information technology is online here, and it is visualized here.
• The UNDP'south Human Development Written report data is here, and UNICEF publishes information on literacy rate here.
  
• Older older publications including data on literacy rates are:
  UNESCO (2002) – Estimated Illiteracy Rate and Illiterate Population Anile 15 Years and Older by Country, 1970–2015, Paris.
  UNESCO (1970) – Literacy 1967–1969 Progress Accomplished in Literacy Throughout the World. Paris (1970)
  UNESCO (1957) – Earth illiteracy at mid-century – A Statistical Written report, Paris.
  UNESCO (1953) – Progress of literacy in various countries – A Preliminary Statistical Study of Available Census Information since 1900, Paris.

World Bank – Globe Development Indicators

• Data: Literacy rate
• Geographical coverage: Global – by country (not by region). There are about no data for rich industrialized countries – only for developing countries.
• Time bridge: Since 1975 – scattered
• Bachelor at:
  • Annual data on 'Literacy charge per unit, adult total (% of people ages 15 and to a higher place)' – going dorsum to 1975
  • Annual information on 'Literacy rate, youth full (% of people ages 15-24)' – going back to 1975 (this data is also published for males and females separately)
• This data is taken from the UNESCO.

Peter Flora's information

• Data: Literacy rate
• Geographical coverage: Mostly Western Europe
• Time span: 19th and 20th century
• Bachelor at: Ii important publications are: Peter Flora (1983 & 1987) – State, Economic system, and Society in Western Europe 1815–1975: A Information Handbook in two Volumes. Frankfurt, New York: Campus; London: Macmillan Printing; Chicago: St. James Press and Peter Flora (1973) – Historical processes of social mobilization: urbanization and literacy, 1850–1965. In S.N. Eisenstadt, S. Rokkan (Eds.), Building States and Nations: Models and Data Resources, Sage, London, pp. 213–258.

OxLAD – Oxford Latin American Economic History Data Base

• Data: Illiteracy charge per unit (percent of adult population)
• Geographical coverage: Latin American countries
• Time span: Since 1900
• Available at: Online here

OECD Skills Outlook

• Data: Measures of numeracy and literacy competence
• Geographical coverage: 24 OECD countries
• Time span: no time serial dimension – just 2012
• Available at: Online here
• Presents the initial results of the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)

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Source: https://ourworldindata.org/literacy

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