About one in eight adults worldwide cannot read and write a simple text, nearly two-thirds of them women, and even in wealthy countries about a quarter of adults read only at the most basic level.
Written from the sources listed below, not independently peer-reviewed.
Of every 100 young people and adults in the world who lack basic literacy skills, how many are women?
739 million
Youth and adults lacking basic literacy skills
Nearly two-thirds of them, 466 million, are women. The global adult literacy rate is 88%.
Data year 2024. Source: UNESCO, 2025
93
Literate women for every 100 literate men
Global figure for adults aged 15 and above; it falls to 84 in sub-Saharan Africa and in Central and Southern Asia.
Data year 2024. Source: United Nations Statistics Division, 2026
26%
Adults with low literacy in OECD skills survey
Average share of adults aged 16 to 65 scoring at or below Level 1 across the 31 countries and economies tested in 2022-23, from 10% in Japan to 53% in Chile.
Data year 2023. Source: Central Statistics Office, Ireland, 2024
Only the two reported values are shown. Over the same period the youth literacy rate rose from 91% to 93%, and in sub-Saharan Africa adult literacy rose from 64% to 69%.
SDG target 4.6 calls for all youth and a substantial proportion of adults to achieve literacy and numeracy by 2030. The UN describes progress since 2015 as gradual: the global adult rate rose only two percentage points to 88% by 2024, and in sub-Saharan Africa gains were too slow to close the gap with other regions.
Nearly 77% of adults who lack basic literacy live in sub-Saharan Africa or Central and Southern Asia. In sub-Saharan Africa their number rose from 196 million to 225 million, even though the share of adults who can read went up.
Source: UNESCO, 2025Ten countries are home to 441 million adults without basic literacy, more than half of the world total; India alone accounts for 191 million.
Source: UNESCO, 2025Among countries with observed data, half have not reached gender parity in adult literacy, and in almost every case the gap disadvantages women.
Source: United Nations Statistics Division, 2026Age deepens the gap: in some sub-Saharan African countries only 31% of older women can read, compared with 55% of older men.
Source: UNESCO, 2025Each country is shaded by its latest available value, so you can see where the gap is widest. Hover or tap a country, search for one, or open the full table.
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Values in % of people aged 15+.
Shown as 100 minus the adult literacy rate, the share of people aged 15 and above who cannot both read and write. Latest year available per country since 2015, so years differ (mostly 2019 to 2024); based on censuses and household surveys, and many high-income countries do not report this indicator.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, via World Bank Open Data. Latest year available per country; years differ.
Values load from World Bank Open Data. Simplified Natural Earth borders; they imply no position on disputed territories.
Instead of one “percent solved” score, DO GOOD rates three separate dimensions. A problem can have mature solutions that still reach too few people. These ratings are an editorial reading of the sources on this page, not a measured index.
Has the situation improved in the real world?
ModerateThe global adult literacy rate rose from 86% in 2015 to 88% in 2024 and youth literacy reached 93%, but 739 million people still lack basic skills, and in OECD countries tested in 2023 adult literacy has mostly stagnated or declined since 2012.
How mature and validated are the available solutions?
ModerateAdult literacy classes are a long-established approach, but rigorous evaluations are few, and a randomised trial in Niger found that reading and maths scores fell in all groups once classes ended. How to make skills last is not settled.
How widely are effective solutions actually used?
LowIn 23% of countries reporting to UNESCO, fewer than 1% of people aged 15 and above take part in adult education, and about 60% saw no improvement in participation by people with disabilities, migrants or prisoners.
Literacy rates exist for most low- and middle-income countries, but many rest on census data several years old, and revisions can be large: the global count fell from 754 million to 739 million partly because population estimates and national data were updated. Direct skill tests cover only 31 mostly high-income countries.
Literacy rates are rising slowly in every region, but the absolute number of adults without basic literacy is growing in sub-Saharan Africa, and the share of adults with low skills has grown in several high-income countries.
Reading and writing are needed to follow a medicine label, sign a contract, use a mobile money account, help a child with homework or find information online. Yet hundreds of millions of adults never had the chance to learn, or left school too early for the skill to stick. Global literacy rates rise slowly, mostly because younger generations stay in school longer, while adults who missed out are rarely reached by second-chance programmes. In some regions the number of adults who cannot read is still growing because populations grow faster than literacy spreads.
The burden falls hardest on women, older people, rural communities and people displaced by conflict, and it is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia. Literacy is also a matter of degree: in high-income countries almost everyone can read in the basic sense, but a large minority of adults can only handle short, simple texts, and surveys there show adult reading skills stagnating or falling over the last decade. Low literacy limits work and income, access to public services and participation in civic life, and it is easily passed on when parents cannot support their children's learning.
SDG target 4.6 asks that all young people and a substantial share of adults become literate and numerate by 2030. Literacy is measured in several ways that answer different questions:
Basic literacy rate
The share of people aged 15 and above (adults) or 15 to 24 (youth) who can both read and write. It comes mainly from censuses and household surveys collected by national statistics offices and compiled by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Functional proficiency
Direct tests of how well adults understand and use written texts. In the OECD Survey of Adult Skills, adults at Level 1 can find a single piece of information in fairly short texts; those at or below this level are considered to have low literacy.
Gender parity
Literacy rates of women and men are compared with an adjusted gender parity index, read as the number of literate women for every 100 literate men.
Participation in adult learning
Whether adults actually take part in literacy and other learning programmes, tracked through country reports to UNESCO's Global Report on Adult Learning and Education.
What works
Courses run by governments, community groups and NGOs teach adults to read, write and count, often in short cycles close to home. Large state campaigns, such as the Chiapas Puede programme recognised by UNESCO in 2026, reach people who never attended school.
Limits
Attendance is hard to sustain alongside work and care, quality varies widely, and skills fade quickly when learners have little to read once a course ends.
What works
Starting in the mother tongue and adding other languages step by step lets learners build on what they already speak. UNESCO estimates that 40% of the world's population does not have access to education in a language they understand.
Limits
It needs teaching materials, trained facilitators and written forms for many languages that have little printed material, which raises costs in highly multilingual countries.
What works
Programmes that tie reading and writing to livelihoods, health, digital services or disaster preparedness give adults a concrete reason to join and to keep practising.
Limits
Broad programmes are harder to evaluate, and the literacy part can be crowded out by the other goals.
What works
Activities that bring parents and children to learn together use a child's schooling to support adults in the household and help parents back their children's learning.
Limits
They reach mainly adults with school-age children and depend on schools or libraries being able to host them.
What works
Most new literacy comes from schooling: youth literacy (93%) is well above the adult rate (88%), which the UN attributes to wider access to education for younger generations.
Limits
It does nothing for adults who already missed out, and it only works if children actually learn to read in school, which many still do not.
Promising, but not proven at scale. The stage shows how far each approach has come; it is not a recommendation.
In a randomised trial with about 5,600 adult learners in Niger, adding simple mobile phone exercises to a literacy course raised writing and maths scores by 0.19 and 0.25 standard deviations. The maths gain was still visible six months later, the writing gain was not.
Literacy programmes increasingly teach phone, internet and online safety skills alongside reading. The reach is limited by access: in 2024, 27% of people in low-income countries used the internet, compared with 93% in high-income countries.
Condensed catch-up programmes for young people displaced or kept out of school by conflict try to restore basic literacy quickly, often in camps or community hubs. Only about 30% of youth in crisis-affected countries are literate, and evidence on long-term results is still thin.
Coordination gap
Of 146 countries that reported to UNESCO, 53% saw no change in adult literacy funding since 2018 and 8% reported a decrease. Among 102 countries surveyed, 57% gave adult literacy less than 4% of their education budget.
Implementation gap
Participation in adult education is lowest among the groups with the greatest need: older adults, rural populations, people with disabilities, migrants and prisoners saw no improvement or a decline in many countries.
Implementation gap
In sub-Saharan Africa the literacy rate is rising, but the number of adults without basic literacy has still grown, because populations grow faster than schools and adult programmes expand.
Knowledge gap
Newly literate adults with few books, newspapers or written tasks around them can lose what they learned within months. Which follow-up support reliably prevents this is not well established.
Technology gap
More and more written information sits online, but only 27% of people in low-income countries use the internet, women are less likely than men to be online, and only about 400 of some 7,000 languages are fully accessible online.
Knowledge gap
Most country literacy rates record only whether someone can read and write, not how well, and functional skills are tested directly mainly in high-income countries, so the depth of the problem in poorer countries is largely unknown.
Unresolved questions, not vetted breakthroughs. Answering any of them would change what is possible.
What combination of follow-up reading material, digital practice and everyday use keeps newly acquired skills from fading after adult courses end?
How can countries measure functional literacy directly, rather than as a yes-or-no census question, at a cost low-income statistics offices can afford?
What explains stagnating or falling adult literacy in many high-income countries over the past decade: changes in reading habits, ageing, migration, schooling quality or how the tests are taken?
Which ways of recruiting and scheduling programmes bring in older women, rural adults and people with disabilities, who are least likely to take part today?
Libraries, community centres and adult education providers often look for volunteers to support adult learners or newly arrived migrants. Regular commitment over months matters more than a single session.
When you donate, look for organisations that report learners' tested reading and writing skills, including some months after a course ends, rather than only the number enrolled.
Use plain language in forms, signs and messages you write at work or in local groups, and offer help discreetly when someone struggles with written information.
Find out how much your local or national government spends on adult literacy and second-chance education, and raise it with elected representatives.
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United Nations Statistics Division (data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics), published 2026
Official SDG progress report. Source of adult (86% to 88%) and youth (91% to 93%) literacy rates for 2015 and 2024, sub-Saharan Africa rates, gender parity indices and the 93 and 84 literate women per 100 literate men.
UNESCO (September 2025, data from the UIS database), published 2025
Latest global literacy factsheet with 2024 data: 739 million adults without basic literacy, 466 million women, regional and country concentration, older women, crisis-affected youth, PIAAC summary, digital access and adult literacy funding.
UNESCO (8 September 2026), published 2026
International Literacy Day 2026 announcement restating that 739 million youth and adults lack basic literacy skills and that 63% of them are women; describes the six prize-winning programmes.
Central Statistics Office, Ireland (10 December 2024, OECD Survey of Adult Skills data), published 2024
Official national release of the 2023 OECD Survey of Adult Skills comparing 31 countries: 26% OECD average at or below Level 1 in literacy, range from 10% (Japan) to 53% (Chile), and level descriptions.
UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (14 June 2022, on the Fifth Global Report on Adult Learning and Education), published 2022
Most recent global report on adult learning, based on data from 159 countries: participation below 1% in 23% of countries and no improvement for people with disabilities, migrants or prisoners in about 60%.
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), published 2012
Randomised evaluation with about 5,600 adult learners in 113 villages: mobile phone exercises raised writing and maths scores, but scores in all groups fell after classes ended.
DO GOOD International (2026). Literacy for Every Adult. Global Challenges. Updated October 15, 2026. https://www.dogood.world/challenges/adult-literacy
For figures, please cite the original sources listed above.