Literacy is important: it rewards those who are proficient and penalizes those who are not. For the individual, literacy affects employment success, income and life chances.

Those are some of the conclusions of a report on the literacy skills of Canadians, released by Statistics Canada and the National Literacy Secretariat on September 12. Reading the Future: A Portrait of Literacy in Canada provides a detailed analysis of the Canadian data collected during the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) in 1994.

Internationally, IALS was designed to measure and compare adult literacy skills in seven industrialized countries: Canada, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland. A report of the international results, Literacy, Economy and Society, was released in December 1995.

In Canada, IALS was also designed to expand on the Survey of Literacy Skills Used in Daily Activities (LSUDA) conducted by Statistics Canada in 1989. Reading the Future addresses some of the policy issues raised by LSUDA by exploring the relationship between literacy and factors such as education, income, occupation, and the use and practice of skills at work and at home. The report also includes an analysis of literacy levels in Canada by region and official language.

Data from IALS indicate that literacy levels in Canada have not substantially changed in the five years since LSUDA. Reading the Future is intended to demonstrate the importance of literacy to individuals, the economy, and society, and to identify signposts for the development of policies that will support literacy in Canada.

IALS defined literacy as: Using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.

This definition reflects the fact that literacy means more than the basic ability to read and write. Literacy requires different skills to understand and use information in a variety of reading material.

IALS developed three broad categories to measure these different skills:

• Prose literacy: the ability to understand and use information from texts such as newspaper articles, instructional manuals, poems and fiction.
• Document literacy: the ability to locate and use information found in formats such as job applications, transportation schedules, maps, tables, and graphs.
• Quantitative literacy: the ability to use arithmetic to perform tasks such as balancing a chequebook, verifying an invoice, or determining the amount of interest on a loan from an advertisement.

Over 5,600 Canadians aged 16 and over voluntarily participated in the survey and were tested in their choice of English or French. Respondents completed specific tasks which focused on literacy skills used in daily life such as:

• reading instructions on how to use a new piece of equipment at work
• decoding labels on hazardous waste containers
• reading software manuals or following the instructions on a bottle of medicine
• scanning a computer screen while using an automatic teller machine

Respondents were then grouped into five levels in each category. Level 1 represents the lowest level of literacy and Level 5 the highest.

Some of the key findings are:

Literacy and the education connection

• There is a clear and strong connection between literacy and education. Education typically increases people's literacy skills in all three categories.
• The majority of recent school graduates have strong literacy skills. Those who left school without a diploma clearly have lower skills, especially on the quantitative scale.
• Education does not "fix" literacy forever. Many Canadian adults (about one-third) do not fit the general pattern: they have higher or lower skills than their education suggests.

Use it or lose it

• Literacy is not a skill that is learned in school and then remains consistent over a lifetime.
• Practice and life experience are as important as education in developing literacy: "Literacy can be influenced by what people choose to do after leaving school ... Individuals can lose skills after the end of schooling through lack of use, or they can gain skills through practice and additional training, even with minimal formal education."

Literacy and the work connection

• Literacy contributes to individual economic success. Individuals with higher skills earn more money, work more weeks per year, and are unemployed less than those with low skills.
• Jobs cause literacy as much as they require it. The majority of Canadians do most of their reading at work. The unemployed, and workers in jobs where they lack the opportunity to use their literacy skills, end up with lower levels of literacy.
• Unemployed people are three times more likely to be at Level 1 than people who are working.
• Industries that have experienced growth employ workers with relatively high skills. Workers in declining industries have lower skills.
• The unemployed, and workers in declining industries who face unemployment, need further education and training because low-skilled jobs are disappearing. Without it, they will find it difficult to meet the high skill demands of growing occupations and industries.
• Social assistance recipients will also find it increasingly difficult to enter the workforce because they have markedly lower skills than other Canadians: over one-third of people who receive social assistance are at Level 1 and less than 1 0% are at Level 4/5.
• Adult education and training are primarily directed at, and accessed by, the already skilled.

Literacy and the global economy

• Compared with some countries, Canadians test at lower levels in both document and quantitative literacy. These skills are particularly important to success in an information economy.
• Canadian skilled craft workers and machine operators have lower literacy levels than their counterparts in Germany and the Netherlands. They also read less on the job.
• Evidence from Canada suggests that literacy is not sufficiently developed "to unlock the benefits of globalization."

Literacy from region to region

• Generally, there are large numbers of adults with high literacy skills in the western provinces and large numbers with low skills in the east. Much of this regional difference in literacy levels simply reflects differences in educational attainment.

Literacy from generation to generation

• Canadians educated before World War II generally have lower literacy skills than those educated after the war. In large part, this is explained by a lower level of educational attainment among older Canadians.
• There are more than 1.6 million seniors in Canada at Level 1.
• Only 15% of adults between the ages of 56 and 65 reported that they had participated in adult education and training. Yet, 38% of this group have Level 1 skills and another 25% are at Level 2.

Literacy and immigration

• Canada is characterized by large numbers of immigrants with both high and low levels of skill. This makes us unique among all the countries which participated in the international survey. In every country, including Canada, there are significant numbers of immigrants at Levels 1 and 2. Only in Canada, however, is the proportion of immigrants with Level 4/5 skills (in English or French) higher than the proportion of non-immigrants.

Literacy and society

• 22% of adults at Level 1 reported that they have excellent reading skills. Without a realistic sense of the adequacy of their skills, Canadians may not make sound choices about participation in adult education or training or realize the extent to which they are at risk if they lose their current jobs.
• Literacy is not just an economic issue. It also affects social issues such as health, justice and safety.
• Literacy helps people maintain their independence and quality of life and enhances their ability to actively take part in society.