Are most Americans illiterate?

What does it mean to be "illiterate?"

Adult illiteracy stems directly from how well adults learned to read in schools.

Do most Americans read below a sixth-grade level?

In a recent Slow Boring article, Matthew Yglesias argued that, “Half of adults read below a 6th grade level. All questions of snobbery and nepo babies aside, the typical American could not do the job of even a really incompetent journalist. They would, in fact, struggle badly to even read and understand journalism outputs.”

This claim struck several nerves. From worries about the nature of democracy to worries about policy design from wonks, the specter of mass illiteracy clearly haunts the chattering classes.

But what does it mean to read at a sixth-grade level? How would we know?

In reality, the vast majority of Americans are competent readers, and the sixth-grade-level claim comes from a long-running misapplication of a national literacy assessment that doesn’t actually compare its test results to middle school grade levels.

However, while we can’t really say at what grade level typical American adults are reading, there is a significant minority of adults who are either only minimally literate or functionally illiterate, and the trend lines point down.

How well can American adults read?

The “gold standard” assessment of adult literacy is the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Importantly, PIAAC is not like an elementary or middle school English exam. It’s not assessing participants’ ability to decode words or comprehend a passage from Shakespeare: The questions are focused on the ability of adults to decipher practical text they might encounter on a daily basis.

For instance, one sample item has test-takers read a welcome letter from a fictional preschool and determine the latest time they are allowed to drop off their child.

(Source: OECD)

In another, test-takers read a newspaper article and an email about new inventions and must identify what criticism they have in common.

(Source: OECD)

PIAAC results cannot be mapped onto grade-level equivalents. The exam wasn’t designed to measure adult literacy in terms of what we might expect a student to be able to do by a certain grade.