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> Illiteracy rates for the Greater Baton Rouge area and surrounding parishes range from 17% to 47%.
> According to the National Education Association, the breakdown for the total population of adults non-literate is as follows: 41% are English speaking whites, 22% are English speaking African Americans, 22% are Spanish speaking, 15% are non-English speaking people.
> Some reasons for illiteracy are: the adult non-reader may have left school early, may have had a physical or emotional disability, may have had ineffectual teachers or simply may have been unready to learn at the time reading instruction began.
> Because they are unable to help their children learn, parents who cannot read often perpetuate the inter-generational cycle of illiteracy. Without books, newspapers or magazines in the home and a parent who reads to serve as a role model, many children grow up with severe literacy deficiencies. Clearly, there is no single cause of illiteracy.
> 43% of people with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty; 17% receive food stamps; and 70% have no job or a part-time job.
> Studies indicate that illiteracy has a significant impact on the economy. According to Nation's Business magazine, an estimated 15 million adults holding jobs today are functionally illiterate. The American Council of Life Insurance reports that three quarters of the Fortune 500 companies provide some level of remedial training for their workers.
> A Literacy at Work study done by the Northeast Midwest Institute and The Center for Regional Policy found that business losses attributed to basic skill deficiencies run into the hundreds of millions of dollars because of low productivity, errors and accidents. The Department of Education estimates that 60% of the unemployed lack the basic skills necessary to be trained for high tech jobs.
> As reported in the 1986 publication entitled Making Literacy Programs Work: A Practical Guide for Correctional Educators (for the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections), one-half of all adults in federal and state correctional institutions cannot read or write at all. Only about one-third of those in prison have completed high school.
> The typical 25 year old male inmate functions 2-3 grade levels below the grade actually completed. U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 60% of prison inmates are illiterate and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.
> In the United States, 40 million adults are functionally illiterate. ("Adult Literacy in America": U.S. Dept. of Education, 1993)
> The U.S. economy suffers an estimated $225 billion annually in lost productivity traced directly to adult illiteracy. (The Association of Lifelong Learning: Vol. 2, No.2, 1987)
> 43% of adults at the lowest literacy level are living in poverty. ("The State of Literacy in America": National Institute of Literacy, 1993)
> 75% of the prison population is illiterate. (Ohio Literacy Resource Center)
> The United States ranks 49th among member nations of the United Nations in literacy. (The Association of Lifelong Learning: Vol. 2, No.2, 1987)
> Of American non-literate adults 63% speak English and 37% are non-English speakers. (The Written Word: July 1993)
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