I am always curious on a number of topics as this blog has shown in the past. The latest instance was who is reading in the us and what are they reading?
So, I found a 2022 Nation survey on US reading statistics. Here are their parameters.
“The pandemic shifted the lifestyle habits of many Americans, including how, when and if they read. To get a clearer picture of current reading habits over the course of the past 12 months, we conducted a survey of 1,621 American adults. The results revealed some interesting insights into how much people are reading and what they’re reading.”
Key Findings
- Almost half of the respondents haven’t read any books in over a year: 48.5%
- Print books were the most read books: 35.4%
- The 65+ age group recorded the highest population of print book readers: 45.1%
- The 45-54 age group contains the highest population of non-readers: 60.9%
- Males recorded a slightly higher population of non-readers compared to females: 51.4%
Reading In The United States—Secondary Sources
- According to the Pew Research Center, about 64% of American adults say they have read a book in the past 12 months. This is a similar share to the previous year, and is consistent with the findings from 2020.
- The National Endowment for the Arts released a report in 2015 that showed literary reading among Americans had declined significantly over the previous 20 years. In 1992, 56% of Americans had read at least one work of literature in the previous year. By 2014, that number had fallen to 46%.
- The NEA report also found that literary reading was more common among older adults than younger ones. In 2014, 53% of adults age 65 and older reported reading literature, compared with just 36% of adults ages 18-24.
- The American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that, on average, Americans age 15 and older spent about 7 minutes per day reading in 2017. This was down from 9 minutes in 2014.
Book Reading By Age Groups
When we analyzed the results from a generational view point, we found the following:
- The 45-54 age group has the highest number of non-readers: 60.9%
- The 65+ age group reported the lowest number of non-readers: 41.4%
- The 18-24 age group reported the highest number of audiobook listeners: 17.0%
- The 65+ age group had the lowest number of audiobook listeners: 5.3%
- The 65+ age group registered the highest number of Bible readers: 1.9%
The data indicates that the number of non-readers increases with age, while the number of audiobook listeners decreases with age.
This may be due to a variety of factors, such as declining health or vision problems.
Alternatively, it could simply be that older adults are less likely to be exposed to new technologies and therefore less likely to adopt them.
I did find it amusing that my bracket, I fall in between the 54 and 65 age bracket, so I am not represented in the survey findings.