Why Are These Services Needed?

Today, adults need higher levels of skills to function effectively in many areas of life. Learning to read and understand medical prescriptions, bus schedules, financial and credit information, written instructions, etc., are vital parts of life. People need problem-solving and higher level reasoning skills to be able to advocate for themselves and for their families.

Locally
At the Mayor's Leadership Summit on Literacy, the following statistics were presented1:
  • 50% of New York state residents can't read a newspaper arcticle and 39% can't find information on a bus schedule
  • 50 % of City School District fourth-graders and 74% of eighth-graders haven't met state standards
  • 27% of (Rochester) city residents age 25 or older don't have a high school diploma

Nationally
ProLiteracy2 reports:
  • In the U.S., 30 million people over age 16...don't read well enough to understand a newspaper story written at the eighth grade level or fill out a job application.
  • The United States ranks fifth on adult literacy skills when compared to other industrialized nations.
  • Adult low literacy can be connected to almost every socio-economic issue in the United States:
  • More than 60 percent of all state and federal corrections inmates can barely read and write.
  • Low health literacy costs between $106 billion and $238 billion each year in the U.S. — 7 to 17 percent of all annual personal health care spending.
  • Low literacy’s effects cost the U.S. $225 billion or more each year in non-productivity in the workforce, crime, and loss of tax revenue due to unemployment.

See also: Report of the National Commission on Adult Literacy


1 Patrick Flanigan, "Duffy sets literacy as goal," Democrat and Chronicle, November 29, 2006, 3B
2 ProLitercy, The Impact of Literacy," http://www.proliteracy.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=345&srcid=191
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