It’s a crisis hidden in plain sight, as about 20 percent of people in the United States cannot read at all and 50 percent of adults can’t read to pass an eighth-grade level. An organization is looking to change those numbers when it comes to adult illiteracy.

According to the San Antonio Public Library, the city of San Antonio has one of the lowest literacy rates in the nation. About 25% of adults living here are “functionally illiterate,” or not able to read at a fifth-grade level.

Not being able to read can impact a person’s daily life, from high unemployment, low wages, and even poor health care.

“People who can’t read have all kinds of troubles in life that you might not even think of,” Joanne Telser-Frere, Director of Program Development at Literacy Chicago told Ivanhoe.

Issues for those who cannot read include trying to read street signs while driving, a prescription bottle from their doctor, or even a menu at a restaurant.

Joanne exclaimed, “You can’t read the menu, you don’t know what you are going to get, so they just say, ‘I’ll have what that guy is having over there.’”

Unemployment rates can be two to four times higher for those with little schooling compared to people with a bachelor’s degree.

“I was a little afraid of taking different jobs because I didn’t know how to read,” Janie Moore said.

That’s why Joanne is part of Literacy Chicago, an organization whose mission it is to empower adults through reading.

For adult learners wanting to learn to read, the first step is, don’t be ashamed. It can discourage you from even trying. To get over that hurdle, look for some support.

“People often need someone to tell them they can do it, because their whole life they’ve been told they can’t,” Joanne said.

Label everything in your house and when you see a word say it. Finally, find something you want to read, which could be comic books, subtitles on a television program, and magazines.

“I used to tell people, I don’t care if you read playboy, as long as you’re reading,” remarked Joanne.

Constant practice every day brings adult learners closer to learning how to read and more opportunities.

Literacy Chicago classes are free to students. It is funded through government grants and private donations. They currently have over 150 volunteers and with COVID-19 bringing classes online, volunteers can be from anywhere.

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According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old – about 130 million people – lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. That’s a shocking number for several reasons, and its dollars and cents implications are enormous because literacy is correlated with several important outcomes such as personal income, employment levels, health, and overall economic growth.

Commenting on the significance of the study, British A. Robinson, president and CEO of the Barbara Bush Foundation, said, “America’s low literacy crisis is largely ignored, historically underfunded and woefully under-researched, despite being one of the great solvable problems of our time. We’re proud to enrich the collective knowledge base with this first-of-its-kind study, documenting literacy’s key role in equity and economic mobility in families, communities and our nation as a whole.”

The new research by Gallup attempts to estimate the gains in GDP that could result from improving adult literacy rates for the nation as a whole as well as in the individual states and major metropolitan areas. Here’s the basic methodology of the study, entitled “Assessing the Economic Gains of Eradicating Illiteracy Nationally and Regionally in the United States,” under the direction of lead author Dr. Jonathan Rothwell, Gallup’s principal economist.

Rothwell relied on an international assessment of adult skills called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) that classifies literacy into several levels. The Department of Education used those results to create and publish estimated literacy levels for every U.S. county.

Adults who scored below Level 3 for literacy on the PIAAC were defined as at least partially illiterate. Adults below or at Level 1 may struggle to understand texts beyond filling out basic forms, and they find it difficult to make inferences from written material. Adults at Level 2 can read well enough to evaluate product reviews and perform other tasks requiring comparisons and simple inferences, but they’re unlikely to correctly evaluate the reliability of texts or draw sophisticated inferences. Adults at Level 3 and above were considered fully literate. They’re able to evaluate sources, as well as infer sophisticated meaning and complex ideas from written sources.

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