Is global literacy rising?
As of 2024, adult literacy is 88%: +13 pts since 1990.
Why it changed
Two things are true at once: reading is the precondition for learning, work, and using public services. And the global aggregate partly relies on modeled or carried-forward country estimates where annual surveys don't exist, so progress is real but not annually measured everywhere.
Source · World Bank (World Development Indicators, UNESCO Institute for Statistics data) CC-BY 4.0 (World Bank Open Data) Last reviewed 2026-07-06
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What is the source for this number?
World Bank (World Development Indicators, UNESCO Institute for Statistics data). Last reviewed 2026-07-06 — CC-BY 4.0 (World Bank Open Data).
How has this changed since 1990?
+13 pts since 1990. As of 2024, adult literacy stands at 88%.
What still isn’t solved?
The global aggregate partly relies on modeled or carried-forward country estimates where annual surveys don't exist, so progress is real but not annually measured everywhere.