Over half of American adults can't read at 6th Grade Levels | Hacker News Reader

Over half of American adults can't read at 6th Grade Levels

moneywise.com

40 pointslaurex64 comments

> Nearly half of all Americans didn’t read a single book in 2025, with the habit falling roughly 40% over the past decade

I don't think this is a great metric of literacy. For one not all books are exactly high quality, and now more than ever there's a plethora of non-book written content available to us.

I used to read a lot of books when I was in school but these days I rarely do, however I probably consume more written word than ever. News, blogs, documentation, various and sundry articles. I read a lot, just not books anymore.

>I don't think this is a great metric of literacy

That's like saying drinking water is not a great metric of hydration.

>For one not all books are exactly high quality, and now more than ever there's a plethora of non-book written content available to us.

Yes, I'm pretty sure those 50%+ of people who "didn't read a single book" did it to avoid all the less than high quality books, or because they were busy consuming high quality non-book written content online.

> Yes, I'm pretty sure those 50%+ of people who "didn't read a single book" did it to avoid all the less than high quality books,

You misinterpret, the implication of quality is that having read a book is not indicative of value, someone could have a high metric "I read 10 books a year" but they're all short, low quality romance novels. Whereas someone could clam "I read no books a year" but they're a grad student with no time for novels.

by the "books read" metric the former would score much better and appear more literate.

> someone could have a high metric "I read 10 books a year" but they're all short, low quality romance novels

That person is still functionally literate. If they can get through a short novel, they can focus on e.g. a contract or draft law. If they’re only watching short-form content online, they may not even be able to follow long-form journalism.

Reading low quality romance novels likely still puts you at reading somewhere around a 6th grade level.

>You misinterpret, the implication of quality is that having read a book is not indicative of value, someone could have a high metric "I read 10 books a year" but they're all short, low quality romance novels. Whereas someone could clam "I read no books a year" but they're a grad student with no time for novels.

I'd argue thataA grad student "with no time for novels" would still be if not functionality illiterate, at least uncultured, in my book (pun intended).

But that aside, such going "case by case", is not helpful. This is an aggregate statistics. If 50%+ of the population "didn't read a single book" this doesn't break down to lots of grad students with no time for reading or similar cases, but more like a major decline in functional literacy.

Having them reading "10 mediocre books a year" would have been a major improvement.

> That's like saying drinking water is not a great metric of hydration.

Nope, these are not comparable analogies.

There’s a difference between wanting to read a book and not wanting to read a book and it has nothing to do with literacy.

For a comparable analogy, it would be like half of Americans don’t buy bottled water, and the conclusion is they are not hydrated.

There are more than enough ‘high quality’ books to fill a lifetime of reading…

Yeah, someone saying they don’t read books because there isn’t anything “high quality” out there is probably proudly illiterate.

sure, and you don't need to read any of them to score highly on the "books read" metric. Thus my argument that it's a crap metric.

One of the smartest people I’ve met in my life is a plumber, who failed 5th grade and never went back to school. He can’t even read/write basic sentences in his native language and he can only speak one language, his native. Yet, he is able to figure out how to use all settings on smartphones on his own, plan plumbing for large properties, has high level people skills, is the president of his union etc. other than computers/scrabble, I am probably not even half as smart as this person, and I have a masters degree (for what it is worth).

All this to say, I don’t understand “number of books read” as a metric of smartness or literacy or intelligence. Maybe it is easier to survey this metric and collect data? Sounds lazy research to me.

> don’t understand “number of books read” as a metric of smartness or literacy or intelligence

Because it’s not. Your plumber is smart and intelligent. They are not literate. This constrains their intelligence nevertheless.

With good speech to text and text to speech technologies the skills of writing and reading may become unnecessary for the bulk of the population. If the average person needs to create a critical document like a contract or a will, or to understands some important document, then it's likely that they will hire someone with the specialized skill set.

What is unclear is whether specialists in STEM can dispense with reading and writing. The representation of information in STEM subjects includes many non-textual systems, such as drawings, charts, figures, diagrams of various sorts, tables, etc. While not primarily consisting of texts in a language, in many cases there are text components ranging from math symbols to full sentence captions or bullet points.

With AI they can dispense with thinking too. And with an Optimus robot they won’t even have to go to the store or leave the lay-z-boy, raw unprocessed beef fat can just be shovelled into their unthinking and illiterate mouths every waking hour by the droid.

Bold of you to assume they'd still need to do actual living. Why not immediately die, and be spared all the extra effort?

For their votes, of course.

Hah, there's a dystopian short story to be written there, where a regime says "These people who never got born would've voted for us, so we're counting their votes. We thank the voting population for the landslide victory and continued trust in us to govern them!"..

Maybe we can ask the Supreme Court and the MAGA party what the plot of the story should be..

Well, they'll make sure they don't need votes soon enough...

Movie: Wall-E -> showing what you are saying :-D

Yeah the present has turned into a mashup of Wall-E, Idiocracy, Inifnite Jest, Back to the Future 2 with some ideas from Neal Stephenson borrowed by the tech bros who think they’re cultured.

>With good speech to text and text to speech technologies the skills of writing and reading may become unnecessary for the bulk of the population.

That's Idiocracy at play.

The difference between fifth and sixth grade reading levels doesn’t have much to do with sounding out words.

Reading text aloud to the illiterate group is not sufficient to let them understand the material.

Arguably, an LLM could rewrite the content to target illiterate audiences.

chatgpt 4o mini did better with your comment than I’d guessed it would:

> With new tools that change speech to text and text to speech, many people might not need to read or write as much. If someone has to make an important paper, like a contract or a will, they will probably ask someone who knows how to do that.

> It's not clear if people who work in STEM (like science and math) can skip reading and writing. In STEM, they use many pictures, charts, and drawings to share ideas. While these don’t always use words, they often have things like math symbols or simple sentences to help explain.

I feel the sentence structures it chose are a bit too complicated for K-3rd grade level, which is what it should have targeted. Maybe some prompt engineering could get it to simplify further.

Good rebuses are hard, it should be interesting to see whether VLMs can be trained to judge them

Very interesting that it did so well. Although it did leave out the point that reading and interpreting documents could also be done by an expert in the first paragraph as well as the idea that not just words but language are used in technical communications by the various symbolic systems.

I think that sophisticated verbal communications can be learned by verbal means, and that the reading of literature is not essential. Non-literate cultures have maintained traditional folk songs, storytelling and epic poetry.

Corporate managers and salespeople are often highly verbal, but not necessarily highly literate. Consider how the written Response to an Request For Proposals is not enough for important opportunities, but must be simplified to a set of slides delivered by a silver-tonged senior salesperson. This provides a better match to the input characteristics of the customer's decision makers.

It replaced expert with “people that know how to do that”, which probably makes sense for the target audience.

(If you’re illiterate in the US, it’s probably because of choices you made, and those choices are correlated to listening to news sources that vilify experts.)

But, yeah, it loses nuance.

Also, I’d argue that literacy is less tied to written language these days than language comprehension, and the ability to articulate yourself.

Back when books were precious those two things were highly correlated. Nowadays, not so much.

Ironically the National Literacy Institute is making me feel illiterate trying to parse their stats.

>On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024.

>21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.

>54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level). [1]

the 54% doesn't include the 21% does it? otherwise no-duh 20% are below 5th grade, 21% in fact. Which would make it 54% of the 79% who are literate? I come up with ~43% there plus 21% illiterate would be 64% of all US adults with some literacy deficiency?

https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-liter...

> the 54% doesn't include the 21% does it? otherwise no-duh 20% are below 5th grade, 21% in fact

No, not in fact. Literacy is typically defined to an age level. A third grader could be literate while an adult reading at their level is not.

I would love to see the sources for those statistics. I am not going to hold my breath.

Really feels like the bottom ~70% of America is about to become a permanent underclass.

What metric would you use to define underclass that doesn’t already apply?

Permanent is the more potent idea being conveyed. Loads of places have an underclass, but the idea that the opportunity to escape it and be condemned to a permanent social-economic station is contrary to the American myth.

I think 7% intergenerational poverty, primarily in the black community due to redlining and racist laws, covers it pretty well.

https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/intergenerational-...

This is already the case

Phone use has taken us 80% of the way there. It’s wild how correlated kids with phones (and teens with social media) is to parents’ income.

Could you expand on that?

I could see rich kids using phones more. Or I could see poor kids using phones more, as an escape. Which way is the correlation?

Rich kids go to schools which ban phones—not phone use, phones entirely—and have device use policed at home.

The poorer the household the more likely they have a device, that they’re using that device in classes, and that they’re constantly on it at home. Within about ten seconds most people I know can tell if they’re in front of an iPad kid. (Eye contact. And not in the way someone on the spectrum avoids it while remaining engaged.)

Poor kids are consuming infinite AI slop and sports gambling at home, rich kids can afford to live in nice neighborhoods where they can enjoy public places and socialize.

Historically, 5 to 10% of the population have been the nobility, upper ranks of the clergy, and military officers and their families. Most of the rest has been the peasantry and landless workers with a small middle class of artisans and minor officials.

A great amount of inequality is normal. Only great wars and plagues achieve significant leveling of society.

Yeah, this is one of the non-theoretical slippery slopes everyone should have been worrying about online for the past couple decades. (Also attestation, but that ship is about to sail.)

I think this helps a lot to explain our current political situation.

Did a two year stint in education (9th through 12th grade) ~27k students, working in LMS software (Moodle).

The state of affairs is... desperate. They allow unlimited retries on English assignments. 20% of kids are blatantly using ChatGPT and don't bother learning basic concepts.

Florida as an example has a pretty strict requirement that you must pass 11th grade English to graduate. There about 10% of students in a limbo where they are now in 12th grade about to graduate, and they are forced to take out of school education to try and pass the 11th grade final exam. It's become an entire business model of some smaller education providers.

"English 3" as its called is pretty foundational, arguments, research, speeches, MLA and sourcing material. It's not just Shakespeare, it's critical thinking (oh god I sound like ChatGPT).

Unfortunately the "service class" will swell to an unfathomable size, with people who will lack any and all ability to learn. How are even the blue collar jobs supposed to be staffed if you can't read the HVAC manual.

This strikes me as a passive way of looking at it when the predominant situation is that administrators actively implement lower standards.

Would be cuter if the HVAC manual is in Chinese...

I wonder what the literacy level in China is like (% who can read at grade 5, 6, 12, etc, level)

Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46259233

Most Americans didn't read many books in 2025

https://yougovamerica.substack.com/p/most-americans-didnt-re...

What's even worse is those who can read at about 6th Grade Level - but are college graduates and media professionals

This won't be a problem in the future. They won't have to read, AI will read a document and tell them what the preparer of that specific LLM wants them to think about it.

Actual Title: More US students are arriving at college unprepared to read. Experts say some may want to ‘rethink’ a $100K degree and follow their interests

Surprised more student activists aren't strongly protesting administrators who let teachers pass them without knowing what they need.

In my experience of University much of student activism was done by students who struggled the most academically and often made it part of their agenda to ease academic standards.

You had an outlier experience, unfortunately. I went to a state school, and most of even my student government class wound up prominently in the Congress or White House.

Why do you think that it is a given that politicians perform better in school? Here in Germany many prominent politicians were academic failures or dropouts.

We had student council elections, where the candidates were listed by degree and the semester, the trend was overwhelmingly that the candidates were in semesters after the usual graduation date, often having studied for more then 5 years.

> Why do you think that it is a given that politicians perform better in school?

Non sequitur? Where was this even remotely claimed?

I said that student activists struggled academically, your counter point was that at your school student activists made it into high political offices.

What other interpretation of your words could there be except you believing that people in high political offices are above average students.

Wouldn't that force us to redefine what the 6th grade level of learning is? Meaning are grade levels static or dynamic?

> Educators often describe reading as a predictor of long-term success, both academically and professionally. A JPMorgan survey of more than 100 billionaires, reading ranked as the top habit elite achievers had in common, including Bill Gates, Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey

This article is not off to a great start when right away it

- mentions Barack Obama in a survey of billionaires (he isn't)

- conflates academic and professional success with becoming a billionaire which is an outlier outcome

- links to a Yahoo News article (reporting the same story as the OP) when claiming to refer to a Fortune Magazine article (not linked; but I found it and the OP sems copypasted from it) as their source for a JP Morgan survey.

> mentions Barack Obama in a survey of billionaires (he isn't)

This is hilarious in the context of an article about falling literacy.

They surveyed billionaires about “elite achievers.” Obama wasn’t surveyed, because as you point out, he isn’t a billionaire. Billionaires were surveyed about him.

Don't be snarky when you might be wrong in no less than 2 ways:

1. When they say

    A JPMorgan survey of more than 100 billionaires, reading ranked as the top habit elite achievers had in common

They are not asking billionaires about other people ("elite achievers") they are asking the billionaires about themselves, and the writer is using another term to avoid repearing "billionaires".

2. The actual report, which I had tracked down prior to reading the message above, is here, and you can use your own literacy skills to confirm that my point (1) above is the correct understanding:

https://assets.jpmprivatebank.com/content/dam/jpm-pb-aem/glo...

> We explored with each principal how they spend their time, what captures their interests and how they view the world across several key areas. While each principal’s experiences are unique, common priorities emerged.

> you can use your own literacy skills to confirm that my point (1) above is the correct understanding

It’s not. I know the 23 Wall guys. They’re constantly surveying their clients for obvious reasons about everything they’ll answer.

In this case, they’re surveying the family offices of billionaires. About, among other things, what makes them special. And what makes other non-billionaire special people special.

The original language correctly conveys this.

The only place where "reading" is mentioned in the entire report is on page 71.

In response to:

    1. What hobbies or interests are you most passionate about? (ranked)

and

    2. "Top seven habits attributing to success (ranked)".
    Most of the principals approach their daily routines with intention, making purposeful choices with their time.

So at this point we have two hypotheses: the first is that there is a PDF report which states something rather clearly, and then Fortune Magazine wrote a puff piece around it which was picked up by Yahoo News, and then copypasted by this other writer in the OP with some filler added for good measure, and you're reading too much into it.

The second is that the Fortune Magazine guy "knows these 23 Wall guys", and the Yahoo News guy knows these guys, and the OP writer knows these guys, and you know these guys, and all you guys know that even though Barack Obama was never mentioned once in that report, it is absolutely obvious that we the readers should read between the lines that the questions asked are not the ones written in the report and the replies they got are not the ones written the report either, and OP writer just gets it.

I am afraid that my literacy is mostly limited here to the things that are written, since I do not know these guys.

I’m not saying the Fortune article might not be puffery. Just that a straight reading of that sentence is clear and plausible and that complaining about it not making sense buries a good argument you have about how this article was written and sourced.

can they think critically?

It is a big reason why we have total dog shit for politicians. If people can't read, they can't educate themselves.

Nobody has mentioned the dramatic increase of non-white immigrants and illegal aliens since 1985, the Reagan amnesty act, migration under the last three United States presidents. Learning to read proficiently requires participation of the child's parents to enforce good habits, etc. Do you really think these kids are even speaking english when they get home from school-- hell no, their speaking their native laguage with their parents.

Import the third world, become the third world.

> Nobody has mentioned the dramatic increase of non-white immigrants and illegal aliens since 1985

Genuine question: do we have data for native-born non-Hispanic Americans?

This could be an artifact of immigration. Anecdotally, I think we have a divide driven by class-based device access (poorer kids are on their devices and social media more than rich kids and more than anyone was in the 80s).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com