What is Literacy?

We can feel good about the fact that literacy in the United States is 99% -- until we realize that this puts the USA tied for 21st with 24 other nations, all behind Tonga (99.2), Kazakhstan (99.6), Slovenia (99.7), Estonia (99.8) and Georgia (100%).  (Data is from  this Wikipedia article which cites this United Nations Development Programme report.)  According to the CIA World Factbook table on Literacy there is no common definition, so the CIA accepts prima facie the numbers provided by local governments.  Afghanistan counts those over age 15, which is a common threshhold.  Albania counts people over nine years of age.  Averages also must be parsed out by gender. 

I once worked a project where my manager was an ethnic Estonian.  He told me that during the worldwide depression of the 1930s, Estonians counterfeited postage stamps in preference to money.  He said that measured by the number of books published annually per capita in the native language, Estonia was second only to Iceland in literacy.  I never checked the figures from the 1930s, but today's numbers are available.  By this standard, the USA, which publishes the most books overall, is again 21st, behind Israel (20) Hungary (19), Estonia (14), Iceland (2), and the Vatican City (1). 

The table is at the bottom of this post.  I compiled the numbers from the usual sources via Wikipedia: books published annually; and 2010 population estimates.  I found it interesting to look at the number of people per book.  At the Vatican City it is four.   Here in the USA, it is over 1100. 

Of course, it is important to read the data.  The UK greatly leads the USA in books published annually, but literacy in English extends to the USA, Australia, etc.  My own copies of The Wealth of Nations and The Communist Manifesto were published in the UK, but bought (used) here in the USA.   The same must be recognized for Spanish and Chinese.  Hong Kong and Taiwan lead in literacy, but the mainland is third in total books published.  Also, literacy in ideographs can be problematic.  In a college class in Japanese for Business, I learned that it is paradoxical that a nation with 99% literacy has markedly fewer readers of newspapers.  To read a newspaper requires knowing about 3000 kanji characters.  I do not know what it takes to be literate in Chinese in China, but 3000 characters seems about right, given that Ogden's Basic English lists 850 words. 

The United Nations Development Programme and the CIA both agree that literacy is a measure of prosperity and freedom.  Thus, it is telling that Arabic does not appear in the top tier.  In Iran, it is Farsi.  The most populous Muslim nation is Indonesia, where Arabic is a foreign language.  As the home of Mecca, with its small population, Saudi Arabia could be like the Vatican City, but it is not.  And that speaks to the economic and political poverty of the Arabic nations. 

Spain is joined by Argentina and Mexico as a top producer of books.  That compounds the magnitude of the raw numbers.  So does the aggregation of the UK, Canada, the USA, and Australia.  To balance that consider the linguistic isolation of leading producers such as Israel, Hungary, and Vietnam.  At the other extreme, India is a nation with five official languages.  Its rank (45th) does come as an aggregate of all books against total population.  Still, when contrasted with China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, the internal lingusitic barriers explain much of India's poverty.

Where does all of this leave the USA?  And how does the Internet impact the statistics?  What does it mean to be a nation of bloggers and tweeters? 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Money is Speech

Money as Press and Speech

Money as Speech and Peacemaking

Start the Presses!

Click to see full chart of statistics.

Rank(Books published)	Nation	Year	Books	Population (2010 estimate)	Ratio  (per 100,000 Pop)	People Per Book
79	Vatical City	2009	228	800	28500	4
52	Iceland	2007	1,533	318,452	481	208
2	United Kingdom	2005	206,000	61,792,000	333	300
24	Finland	1996	13,104	5,378,800	244	410
26	Denmark	1996	12,352	5,560,628	222	450
12	Netherlands	1993	34,067	16,648,100	205	489
18	Switzerland	1996	15,371	7,782,900	197	506
6	Spain	2008	86,300	46,152,925	187	535
9	Taiwan	2007	42,018	23,162,123	181	551
23	Sweden	1996	13,496	9,412,851	143	697
30	Hong Kong	2000	9,773	7,061,200	138	723
25	Belarus	2009	12,885	9,481,100	136	736
52	Estonia	1999	1,806	1,379,645	131	764
22	Belgium	1991	13,913	10,827,519	128	778
5	Germany	2007	96,000	81,802,000	117	852
28	Czech Republic	1996	10,244	10,515,818	97	1027
34	Austria	1996	8,056	8,396,760	96	1042
31	Hungary	1996	9,193	10,014,324	92	1089
36	Israel	2006	6,866	7,697,600	89	1121
1	United States	2008	275,232	312,055,000	88	1134
51	Latvia	1996	1,965	2,229,500	88	1135
4	Russian Federation	2008	123,336	141,927,297	87	1151
7	Iran	2010	65,000	75,078,000	87	1155
35	Portugal	1996	7,868	10,636,888	74	1352
19	Romania	2008	14,984	21,466,174	70	1433
14	South Korea	1996	30,487	48,501,000	63	1591
37	Greece	2002	6,826	11,306,183	60	1656
10	Italy	1996	35,236	60,545,940	58	1718
17	Canada	1996	19,900	34,353,000	58	1726
11	France	1996	34,766	65,821,800	53	1893
8	Japan	1996	56,221	127,370,000	44	2266
13	Turkey	2009	31,414	73,722,988	43	2347
32	Australia	2004	8,602	22,561,000	38	2623
21	Poland	1996	14,104	38,092,000	37	2701
20	Ukraine	2004	14,790	45,795,911	32	3096
29	Argentina	1996	9,850	40,091,359	25	4070
38	Malaysia	1996	5,843	27,565,821	21	4718
16	Mexico	2007	20,300	112,322,757	18	5533
33	Thailand	1996	8,142	67,070,000	12	8238
15	Brazil	2009	22,027	190,732,694	12	8659
3	China	2007	136,226	1,342,310,000	10	9854
39	Vietnam	1993	5,581	86,930,000	6	15576
42	Indonesia	1996	4,018	237,556,363	2	59123
27	India	1996	11,903	1,194,010,000	1	100312
54	Nigeria	1991	1,314	158,259,000	1	120441