Highlights From the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey

‘Highlights from the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey’ (ALL), was released today by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in the Institute of Education Sciences. It coincides with the release of the international results by Statistics Canada and the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the international study sponsors.
The report shows that America’s adults performed worse than their counterparts in Bermuda, Norway, and Switzerland, but better than those in Italy. There was no measurable difference between the performance of Canadian and U.S. adults. ALL reports on the literacy and numeracy skills of adults ages 16-65 in six countries. A second phase of ALL, in which
additional countries are collecting data, is currently under way.
ALL is designed to answer questions about the extent to which adults can use information from written materials to understand text and tables and apply mathematics to solving problems likely encountered in real life.
It can address in addition the relationship of those skills to various economic, social, and personal characteristics. The United States also conducts a national survey of adult literacy that provides more detailed information and some state-level estimates of adult literacy skills, results of which are scheduled for release later this year. Other findings from ALL:

There was no measurable difference in the literacy performance between men and women in Bermuda, Canada, Norway, or the United States. However, in Italy and Switzerland, men outscored women.

Men outscored women on the numeracy scale in every country. In the United States, men scored 15 points higher than women on the literacy scale.

White U.S. adults outscored Black, Hispanic, and other adults in both literacy and numeracy. There was no measurable difference between the performance of Blacks and Hispanics in literacy or numeracy.