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Illiteracy is costing the UK economy more than £81 billion a year, new research suggests.
People who cannot read earn lower salaries, create less wealth for the nation and use more government money, says a report published today by the World Literacy Foundation.
Six million UK adults are functionally illiterate, meaning they cannot read a medicine bottle or food labels or fill out a job application, it states.
The research reveals that an illiterate adult will earn at least 30 per cent less than someone who can read.
Experts said illiterate parents' children are also more likely to grow up unable to read and be trapped in a cycle of despair.
The report comes as donations to the Evening Standard's Get London Reading campaign top £400,000.
Our literacy push aims to pay for volunteers to become reading mentors for schoolchildren who are struggling with words. So far, 313 reading helpers have been placed in schools as a result of the campaign.
Andrew Kay, CEO of the World Literacy Foundation, said: "Illiteracy affects more than six million people in the UK and almost 800 million globally.
One of the best things we can do to end poverty in the world is improve literacy. This is the key to getting people into jobs, raising their income and enabling them to take part in society."
The preliminary report by the World Literacy Foundation states that individuals and firms in the UK lose about £58 billion through lower wages or business earnings because of poor literacy.
This does not include cash lost in individual wealth creation or entrepreneurship because people struggle to read and write.
The report says the social cost of illiteracy is more than £23 billion, which is spent on welfare and unemployment benefits and social programmes related to health, crime and poverty.
The full report will be published at the World Literacy Summit in Oxford this April - the first conference dedicated to addressing the problem and its link to poverty. WLS committee chairman Dr Anthony Cree said: "The UK is missing out on an injection of funds into its economy worth billions of dollars.
"If a person does not have the solid base of literacy and numeracy skills that so many of us take for granted, their opportunities in life are more limited.
"Many higher-paying job and training opportunities are closed to them and they are more likely to turn to a life of crime.
"They make poor decisions on their health due to the inability to read. Their children are also more likely to be illiterate and follow this same vicious cycle of poverty and disadvantage."
Reader views (7)
Really amazing that people are commenting that the inability to spell is the fault of the vocabulary itself being "not fit for purpose". Will they next suggest that the language be reduced to a set of 500 words ? One learns to spell, just as one learns anything else. It can be fun, if done right. Most important is the exposure to books and the pleasures of reading. Has anyone made the connection that hundreds of public libraries and school libraries are being laid waste -- and how that will affect the most vulnerable children's literacy ? The 'Summer Reading Challenge' for children, the '6 Book Challenge' for others; homework clubs, reading groups, adult literacy classes, story-time for tots. Better, surely, to defend these vital services than from the axe than seek to dumb down the language. In the effort to be 21st Century, we are losing our common sense.
- Shirley Burnham, Swindon, England, 29/01/2012 13:41
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We have spent so much money trying to solve this problem over the last 70 years and failed. We make a little gain here and there but the problem remains chronic. Has anyone thought that the issue is that English, in its written form, is not fit for purpose? Not the spoken English that we know and love but the writing system, the spelling system. We live in the 21 century in a knowledge economy but have a spelling system that was archaic even in the 18th. Since lives are being blighted by this and it is hurting all of us in the pocket, we need to think - for once - about the link between our irregular spelling system and these appalling statistics. (Apologies for the inevitable spelling errors.)
- NJH, London, 26/01/2012 20:04
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The most cost-effective way of enabling more children to read is to make learning to read easier - by amending the spellings which cause reading difficulties, such as the wrong use of the letter o in words like 'once, other, most, women, wolf'. (The Sightwords page on my website shows all the common words affected by this abuse of the alphabetic principle.)
Learning to spell English is even harder (blue shoe flew through to you too), but the irregular spellings which impede reading progress do the greatest harm.
The current ES campaign is helping many children, but if English spelling was made a little more sensible, they would not be needed.
- Masha Bell, Wareham, Dorset, England, 26/01/2012 06:40
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'Pupils at Winifred Holtby School in the rundown Bransholme district of Hull'
Just seeing this story today makes you wonder why this is not happening all over England, they are a credit to the school!
- Ed, London, 25/01/2012 18:23
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Go to Ramsgate, see how many people there are like this report as it seems they have only one sentence that they can text ( cannot see their writing skills)
- Ed, London, 25/01/2012 14:37
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If you voted labour or conservative in the last 15 years you voted for this.
- Jim Bobski, Ramsgate, 25/01/2012 13:21
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This is the tip of a very big iceberg. I had two year 10 girls come to my office looking for work experience. One was clutching a GCSE maths book. I asked them what the formula was for finding the area of a circle. One of the girls said 1 the other said infinity. They come from a school classed as outstanding by OFSTEAD. I have given them work experience on the basis that at least they are trying and who knows the two weeks may do them some good
- Jack Spratt, Richmond, Surrey, 25/01/2012 11:01
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