1. EducationWorld

   Every second child in the world is born where most ten-year-olds cannot understand a simple text

   In 2023, 70.3 million of 131 million children were born in such countries: 53.5%. Where most can read it, 24.5%; for the remaining 22.0% there is no reading estimate. In 1990 the same countries had 44.8% and 40.6% of births.

   Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024 (births); World Bank: learning povertyOpen on the chart →

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   "Learning poverty" is the World Bank's name for the share of children who, at the end of primary school (about age ten), cannot read and understand a simple text; children out of school count in it too. Countries are split by their latest estimate, above or below half, and their births are added up.

   Bars: shares of all children born on Earth in 2023, in countries where most ten-year-olds cannot understand a simple text, where most can, and where there is no such estimate.

   • Births where most ten-year-olds cannot read a simple text million

     1990: 64.2; 2023: 70.3

     UN World Population Prospects 2024 (births); World Bank: learning poverty

   • Births where most can read it million

     1990: 58.3; 2023: 32.1

     UN World Population Prospects 2024 (births); World Bank: learning poverty

   • Births with no reading estimate million

     1990: 20.9; 2023: 28.9

     UN World Population Prospects 2024 (births); World Bank: learning poverty

   • India: cannot read a simple text at the end of primary %

     2017: 56.1

     UN World Population Prospects 2024 (births); World Bank: learning poverty

   For each country the latest learning-poverty estimate of 2013–2023; the threshold is 50%. 43 countries are above it, 65 below. Births are UN estimates (World Population Prospects 2024; national statistics in some recent years), summed over all countries. The same split is applied to 1990: this is "where children are born", not "how children read then".

   India weighs most: 23.2 million births, 2017 estimate 56.1%; without it the share would be 35.8%. The shift since 1990 is largely China: 28.1 million births then and 9.0 million now, and most of its ten-year-olds read. The largest country without an estimate is Nigeria. Estimates come every few years from different tests. Both births and reading go with a country's poverty; the card claims no link between births and reading themselves.

   A question for this picture

   And are these children in school? In Morocco almost all are, and still most cannot read a simple text.

More findings

• OECD pupils with 5–7 hours of non-study screen time at school score 62 points lower in maths than those with up to an hour
• Israel: 15-year-olds with problems from social media rose from 5% to 16%, and maths did not fall; in Norway there are fewer, and maths fell 33 points
• OECD pupils: where phones are banned at school, 50% use one there every day; where they are not, 63%
• OECD pupils: an hour of leisure screen time at school goes with 6 fewer maths points, an hour after school with 3 more
• Schoolgirls in Europe and Canada: schoolwork weighs on 62% of 15-year-old girls, up from 50% in 2014; boys, 43%
• Morocco: almost every child goes to school, yet 60% cannot read a simple text at the end of primary

All findings →