Another year, another study declaring reading under siege, or attack, or threat, or whatever. I guess it's time for the government to start subsidizing Kindles. I actually tend to be a bit skeptical of these studies, as they equate reading with book reading, and don't take into account the fact that many of us now spend our days staring at words on the computer. Additionally, the report is working on a 10-year timeframe, and the bulk of the decline appear to have happened in the early-90s, but steadied out after that. Those caveats aside, these points are interesting:
In seeking to detail the consequences of a decline in reading, the study showed that reading appeared to correlate with other academic achievement. In examining the average 2005 math scores of 12th graders who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books, an analysis of federal Education Department statistics found that those students scored much lower than those who lived in homes with more than 100 books. Although some of those results could be attributed to income gaps, Mr. Iyengar noted that students who lived in homes with more than 100 books but whose parents only completed high school scored higher on math tests than those students whose parents held college degrees (and were therefore likely to earn higher incomes) but who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books.
The new report also looked at data from the workplace, including a survey that showed nearly three-quarters of employers who were polled rated “reading comprehension” as “very important” for workers with two-year college degrees, and nearly 90 percent of employers said so for graduates of four-year colleges. Better reading skills were also correlated with higher income.
In an analysis of Education Department statistics looking at eight weekly income brackets, the data showed that 7 percent of full-time workers who scored at levels deemed “below basic” on reading tests earned $850 to $1,149 a week, the fourth-highest income bracket, while 20 percent of workers who had scored at reading levels deemed “proficient” earned such wages.
There are two things to take from that data: First, environment matters. Studies correlating outcomes with number of books in the house, or number of words spoken by a parent to an infant, have long shown a robust relationship.
Second, I'm always a bit amazed at how weak the relationship between achievement and income can appear. Given that reading skills are not the only thing -- or even near the only thing -- creating the variance between the 20% of "proficient" readers reaching the fourth income quintile and the seven percent of "below basic" readers doing so, that's a smaller variance than I would've expected. It would be interesting to get the full data set here and see if the relationship were stronger in the third and second quintiles, or if it actually weakened as you went down the ladder.
