Poor literacy, poor people.

Thanks to Super Sea Chimps for reminding me that a staggering 16 percent of this country's population live in poverty. Poverty, in 2002, means for a 2 person family making $12k a year or less, and for a four person family $18k a year or less (see also the US Census Bureau) Not much money to live on is it? Of course I didn't really need reminding, this kind of fact is always at the back of my mind, although I thought it was more like 12%, but it turns out 16% is for children (as Diane correctly cited) and 12% is the average for the entire population. Basically the disparity tells us that poor people have more kids than the average hence more poor kids in poverty...

Needless to say people in poverty don't benefit on ounce from $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, even though that $1.5 trillion (yes, that 1,500,000,000,000 dollars!) could give them each a handy $44,000 pay out (assuming 34 million in poverty). Sure some of them might go piss it away in Vegas, but then so do people not in poverty, every day, day in day out - there's a multi-billion dollar industry based around it. And some might go buy a big SUV with it and help destroy the environment. Sorry, that's also happening on a massive scale as rich people load up on tax-break Hummers and suck, and naturally it also has several big businesses based around it. And some might also go by a truck load of beer and literally piss it away. Well that's no worse than paying thousands for a bottle of Bordeaux and pissing that away is it?

But why assume the worst? Maybe the majority of people in poverty are just like the majority of use, but poor. They are you an me if we lose our job and find our skills are no longer in demand. They are you and me if our towns major employer moves out of town and we don't have enough money to relocate anywhere else. They are you and me if we have a wreck and medical insurance doesn't cover our bills and we get weighed down with insurmountable debt problems. Or they are you an me if are parents were poor and we lived some place where the schools are so poor funded that we ended up without the skills to get anything but a minimum wage job flipping burgers or stacking shelves at Wal-Mart.

I think the latter is probably more likely because baring a huge hand out from the government, or winning the lottery then poverty usually begats poverty. Education is the key to escape from the prison of poverty and the miraculous thing is that great education costs a tiny fraction of the benefits it can yield to society.

Lets take a look at a fact or two... The 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey measured literacy in the American population and gave a score that translated to one of five levels for prose, document and numerative areas of literacy. Briefly the levels can be describe as:

• Level 1 - Able to total an entry on a deposit slip, locate the time and place of a meeting on a form, and identify a piece of specific information in a brief news article.
• Level 2 - Able to calculate the cost of a purchase or determine the difference between two items. They could also locate a particular intersection on a street map and enter background information on a simple form.
• Level 3 - Able to integrate information from relatively long or dense text or from documents, to determine appropriate arithmetic operation based on information contained in the directive, and to identify the quantities needed to perform the operation.
• Level 4 and 5 - Demonstrated proficiencies associated with the most challenging tasks in this assessment, many of which involved long and complex documents and text passages

The NALS found that for prose tests, 21% of adults in this country have up to Level 1 literacy skills, 48% have Level 1 or Level 2 skills, and only 20% rate at level 4 or above. The numbers are about the same for document and numerative literacy skills.

Given that level 3 is widely considered the minimum level for success in the modern workplace it is clear that 48% of the US population doesn't meet this requirement and the majority, 68%, are only just meeting it.

When compared to the rest of the world, the International Adult Literacy Study found that the US ranks only 13th out of 17 "high income" countries. Sure we have a lot of immigrants with poor English skills, but when looking at only native born Americans we rate 10th, and looking at native born high-school drop outs we rate even worse at 15th. So while including immigrants does pull the average down somewhat, it seems more likely that failure to complete even the most basic education is a more important factor.

The NALS also examined literacy and average wages and found:

• at prose literacy Level 1 was $15,480, compared to $8,520 for welfare recipients;
• at prose literacy Level 2 was $25,010, compared to $9,540 for welfare recipients;
• at prose literacy Level 3 was $35,020, compared to $11,710 for welfare recipients; and
• at prose literacy Level 4 was $45,610, compared to $15,820 for welfare recipients.

So if you are working and have literacy level 4 (not even the highest but in the top 20%) then your average income will be three times that of the bottom 21% with literacy level 1.

Isn't that staggering? Even with a purely economic perspective doesn't seem obvious that something really wrong is going on in this country and that education and hence literacy could be a major benefit our "growth" not only at a GDP level, but also at the level of fundamentally improving society. After all, if 21% of the country can barely even read, to the point where they are "unable to determine the correct amount of medicine from information on the package" how the heck are they going to make any decision about who should be president without relying on the spoken opinion of someone else?

Its no wonder that TV with its all pictures portrayal of the world is so popular. And just how is someone who is barely literate ever going to function effectively in a computer screen driven world? Even using Google or Yahoo is going to be a major challenge, no wonder a point and click simplification like AOL is still needed.