The real cost of illiteracy

DoSomething.org is all about causes.

It’s about young people — millions of young people — and social change.

DoSomething.org’s stated goal, quite bluntly, is to “make the world suck less.” Its 5.3 million members vow to take on “any cause, anytime, anywhere.”

Cringing ever so slightly, we say amen to making the world, um, better, and we applaud DoSomething.org specifically for its efforts in improving literacy among our nation’s youth.

Literacy, you know, is the ability to read and to understand what you’re reading. Today’s front-page story gives you an optimistic glimpse into what’s happening on the reading frontier right here at home. For a broader perspective we share these 11 facts about literacy compliments of DoSomething.org’s researchers:

1. Two-thirds of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare. Over 70 percent of America’s inmates cannot read above a fourth grade level.

2. One in four children in America grow up without learning how to read.

3. Students who don’t read proficiently by the third grade are four times likelier to drop out of school.

4. As of 2011, America was the only free-market OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) country where the current generation was less educated than the previous one.

5. Nearly 85 percent of the juveniles who face trial in the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, proving there is a close relationship between illiteracy and crime. More than 60 percent of all inmates are functionally illiterate.

6. Fifty-three percent of fourth-graders admitted to reading recreationally “almost every day,” while only 20 percent of eighth-graders could say the same.

7. Three-quarters of Americans who receive food stamps perform at the lowest two levels of literacy, and 90 percent of high school dropouts are on welfare.

8. Teenage girls between the ages of 16 to 19 who live at or below the poverty line and have below average literacy skills are six times more likely to have children out of wedlock than girls their age who can read proficiently.

9. Reports show the rate of low literacy in the United States directly costs the health care industry more than $70 million every year.

10. In 2013, Washington, D.C., was ranked the most literate American city for the third year in a row, with Seattle and Minneapolis close behind.

11. Long Beach, Calif., was ranked the country’s most illiterate city, followed by Mesa, Ariz., and Aurora, Colo.

Read into those stats what you will, but let’s all agree on one thing: Putting heightened emphasis on literacy is only going to make our community, our state, and our nation stronger.

In other words, to make the world suck less, read more.