Do More Than Half of Americans Read Below a 6th-Grade Level?

This claim is true, according to a review of the U.S. education system that was conducted in September 2020. Let’s explore.

A Gallup analysis published in March 2020 looked at data collected by the U.S. Department of Education in 2012, 2014, and 2017. It found that 130 million adults in the country have low literacy skills, meaning that more than half (54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, according to a piece published in 2022 by APM Research Lab.

Does the US Rank 125th for Literacy?

We’d also like to briefly address the second part of the claim, which states that the U.S. ranks 125th globally for literacy. Though this statistic is technically true, there are some important caveats that we’d like to note about gathering and analyzing global data sets.

“Literacy rate” is defined by UNESCO Institute for Statistics as “the percentage of the population of a given age group that can read and write.” An August 2019 report in a journal article published by the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education (IMSE) noted that the U.S. ranked 125th for literacy.

Data published by the geographic data and statistics website World Atlas confirmed that the U.S. was ranked 125th with a literacy rate of 86%, just after Oman and just before the Syian Arab Republic. Top countries, by comparison, included Andorra, Luxembourg, Norway, and Liechtenstein with literacy rates of virtually 100%.