LITERACY

Literacy can be defined as the ability to read simple passages of printed text and sign one's name. The expansion of literacy is both a marker of and a contributory factor to economic development. It also may play a role in the mortality and fertility declines of the demographic transition.

Collection of Literacy Data

In developing countries literacy data are collected routinely in national censuses for the population above a specified age. For historical studies the data problems are much greater. One of the few sources that can be mined for historical Europe are parish records from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century.

After the mid-eighteenth century in England marriage registration required that a couple and their witnesses sign (or mark) the parish register. Because people were taught to read before learning to write, the ability to sign one's name can be used as an indicator of literacy. In a society in which nearly all people married, information on historical levels of and trends in literacy therefore can be drawn from marriage records.

Findings from the Past

These snapshots from earlier periods made it clear that the acquisition of functional literacy was a dramatically stratified cultural resource. Men were more than twice as likely as women to be able to sign their names; the higher up the social scale one moved, the more likely it was that one could sign; the more urbanized one was, the less likely one was to identify oneself with a mark; and so on.

In the middle of the eighteenth century essentially one in two English men could sign his name and thus presumably could read. In economic terms those people who were active in a capitalist economy were likely to be readers who were able to keep ledgers and write letters to partners, customers, and others. In social and cultural terms those with leisure time were able to enjoy the burgeoning output of the presses; novels and newspapers were significantly new developments at that time. In demographic terms, however, it is not clear whether one can determine the characteristics that distinguished the literate from the illiterate. Readers (and signers) were not more "modern" than their illiterate families, neighbors, and friends; all belonged to a demo-graphic culture marked by Malthusian prudential marriage and a fertility regime that was not so much "natural" as it was culturally constructed. There was

TABLE 1

little difference in fertility profiles between the literate and the illiterate.

During the classical Industrial Revolution (1770–1850) it seems that living in one of the northern English towns was no more likely to lead to the acquisition of literacy than it was to improve one's children's life expectancy. Early industrial society neither privileged literacy nor promoted it. Although functional literacy remained fairly constant, there was a significant demographic change: Marriages took place earlier in both town and country, illegitimacy rates skyrocketed, marital fertility became more duration-sensitive (higher levels in the first years of marriage, which might only reflect bridal pregnancy, but also higher levels in the later years), and mortality levels dropped in the countryside but rose dramatically in the inner cities.

The truly significant shift in popular functional literacy came about in the second half of the nineteenth century and coincided with the onset of the demographic transition and the fertility decline. In part this was a reflection of the declining value of children's labor; in part it was a reflection of the incursions of state-sponsored schools, which became compulsory only in the 1870s and were plagued with truancy for another generation; and in part it was a reflection of the reconfiguration of popular culture in the age of the Penny Post, the postcard, the penny newspaper, the train schedule, and a series of changes that made the acquisition and maintenance of literacy more relevant to the entire population. One could function as an illiterate in the pre-1850 oral culture, but this became less true afterward. Even if most people never were required to sign their names on any occasion other than the marriage ceremony, illiteracy became a cultural disadvantage that discriminated against nonreaders.

The Contemporary Situation

Illiteracy remains a problem in much of the world. The statistics assembled by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and published in that organization's World Education Report estimated that worldwide in 1995 there were 885 million illiterates among the population 15 years old and over, 64 percent of whom were women. The corresponding rate of adult illiteracy was given as 22.6 percent (16.4 percent for men and 28.8 percent for women). The illiteracy data for developing countries as of 1995, grouped into UNESCO's five regions, are given in Table 1.

The connection between "modernizing" literacy and the demographic transition cannot be determined. Micro-level research that would analyze the demographic implications of literacy directly remains to be done.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Goody, Jack. 1986. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.

——. 2000. The Power of the Written Tradition. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Goody, Jack, ed. 1968. Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.

Laqueur, Thomas. 1976. "The Cultural Origins of Popular Literacy in England 1500–1850." Oxford Review of Education 2: 255–275.

Levine, David. 1979. "Education and Family Life in Early Industrial England." Journal of Family History 4: 368–380.

——. 1980. "Illiteracy and Family Life during the First Industrial Revolution." Journal of Social History 14: 25–44.

——. 1984. "Parson Malthus, Professor Huzel, and the Pelican Inn Protocol: A Comment." Historical Methods Newsletter 17: 21–24.

Sanderson, Michael. 1974. "Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England." Past and Present 56: 75–104.

Schofield, R. S. 1973. "Dimensions of Illiteracy." Explorations in Economic History, 2nd series. 10:437–454.

Spufford, Margaret. 1979. "First Steps in Literacy: The Reading and Writing Experiences of the Humblest Seventeenth-Century Spiritual Auto-biographers." Social History 4: 407–435.

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. 1998. World Development Report 1998: Teachers and Teaching in a Changing World. Paris: UNESCO.

Vincent, David. 1981. Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Autobiography. London: Methuen.

——. 1989. Literacy and Popular Culture. England, 1750–1914. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

——. 2000. The Rise of Mass Literacy: Reading and Writing in Modern Europe. Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press.

INTERNET RESOURCE.

University of Pennsylvania/Graduate School of Education. 1999. International Literacy Explorer. <http://www.literacyonline.org/explorer/regsworld.html>.