Trends in adult literacy, 1990-2008

8 September is International Literacy Day, which was first celebrated in 1966. New estimates of adult and youth literacy by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) show that the percentage of literate persons continues to grow worldwide. Even so, in 2008, 796 million adults aged 15 years or older - 17% of all adults worldwide - still lacked basic reading and writing skills and 64% of them were women (see UIS fact sheet on adult and youth literacy). By comparison, 24% of all adults were illiterate in 1990.

Figure 1 displays how the adult literacy rate and the associated gender parity index (GPI) have evolved between 1990 and 2008 for the 10 Millennium Development Goal regions and for the world as a whole. The gender parity index is the ratio of the female over the male literacy rate. For example, the female and male literacy rate in 2008 - 78.9% and 88.2%, respectively - yield a GPI of 0.9 (see Table 1). A GPI between 0.97 and 1.03 is usually considered gender parity. At GPI values below 1, women are disadvantaged and at GPI values above 1, men are disadvantaged. If a country or region reaches universal literacy, with male and female literacy rates of 100%, the GPI must be 1 by definition. This can be seen in the developed regions and in the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), both of which are near universal literacy with a GPI of 1.

Figure 1: Adult literacy rate and gender parity, 1990-2008

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, September 2010.

At the global level, both the adult literacy rate and gender parity improved over the past 20 years. The literacy rate grew from 76% in 1990 to 83% in 2008 and the GPI from 0.84 to 0.90 (see Table 1). Progress was especially strong in Northern Africa, where the adult literacy rate increased by 20%, and in Eastern and Southern Asia, which saw an increase of 15%. In Northern Africa and Southern Asia less than half of all adults were literate in 1990, less than in any other region. In 2008, the lowest literacy rates were observed in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, with 62% and 63%, respectively. However, even sub-Saharan Africa managed to increase the share of adults with basic reading and writing skills by 9% between 1990 and 2008. In the remaining regions, the increase in the adult literacy rate over the past two decades was as follows: Western Asia 11%; South-Eastern Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean 7%; Oceania 4%; CIS 1%; and the developed regions 0.3%. The rate of increase in the developed regions and in the CIS countries was neglible because both regions had already reached near-universal adult literacy in 1990. Literacy rates are also high in Eastern Asia, South-Eastern Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean; in all three regions more than 9 out of 10 adults are able to read and write.

Gender parity also improved in all MDG regions, with Northern Africa again showing the biggest increase, from 0.57 in 1990 to 0.76 in 2008, followed by Eastern Asia and Southern Asia, where the GPI increased by 0.14 over the same period. In spite of this increase, Southern Asia continues to exhibit relatively high gender disparity in adult literacy, with a GPI of 0.70. The UIS reports similar disparities for sub-Saharan Africa (0.75) and Northern Africa (0.76). In the other regions the GPI for adult literacy was as follows in 2008: Western Asia 0.84, Oceania 0.89, Eastern Asia 0.94, South-Eastern Asia 0.95, and CIS and the developed regions 1.00.

Table 1: Adult literacy rate and gender parity, 1990-2008

MDG region	Year	Adult literacy rate (%)
		Total	Male	Female	GPI
Developed regions	1990	98.7	99.0	98.4	0.99
	2008	99.0	99.2	98.9	1.00
Commonwealth of Independent States	1990	98.1	99.4	97.1	0.98
	2008	99.5	99.7	99.4	1.00
Eastern Asia	1990	78.9	87.7	69.7	0.80
	2008	93.8	96.8	90.7	0.94
South-Eastern Asia	1990	84.8	90.0	80.0	0.89
	2008	91.9	94.5	89.5	0.95
Southern Asia	1990	47.3	60.1	33.5	0.56
	2008	61.9	73.2	50.9	0.70
Western Asia	1990	73.8	84.2	62.6	0.74
	2008	84.5	91.5	76.9	0.84
Northern Africa	1990	47.8	60.8	34.6	0.57
	2008	67.3	76.7	58.1	0.76
Sub-Saharan Africa	1990	53.1	63.7	43.1	0.68
	2008	62.5	71.6	53.6	0.75
Latin America and the Caribbean	1990	84.4	85.9	82.8	0.96
	2008	91.0	91.9	90.3	0.98
Oceania	1990	62.9	68.9	56.5	0.82
	2008	66.4	70.2	62.6	0.89
World	1990	75.7	82.2	69.2	0.84
	2008	83.4	88.2	78.9	0.90

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, September 2010.

National and regional literacy rates can be obtained from the UIS Data Centre. From the main Data Centre page at stats.uis.unesco.org, click on Predefined Tables and then Literacy. National literacy rates are available for the years 1975 to 2008. Regional and global literacy rates are presented by census decade, from 1985-1994 to 2005-2008.

Related articles

• Literacy data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics
• Adult literacy in 2007
• Disparity between male and female literacy rates
• Disparity between adult and youth literacy
• Adult literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Reported and tested literacy in Nigeria
• Adult literacy in Nigeria
• Millennium Development Goal regions

External links

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
• UIS Data Centre
• UIS announcement for International Literacy Day
• UIS fact sheet on adult and youth literacy (PDF, 664 KB)
• UNESCO page for International Literacy Day
• International Literacy Day (United Nations)

Friedrich Huebler, 8 September 2010, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2010/09/lit.html