Adult and youth literacy in 2009

8 September was International Literacy Day. On this occasion, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) released a fact sheet with estimates of adult and youth literacy in 2009, the most recent year with data.

The global adult literacy rate, for the population 15 years and older, was 83.7% in 2009, compared to 83.4% in 2008. The adult illiterate population fell from 796.2 million in 2008 to 793.1 million in 2009. 64.1% of the adult illiterate population were women. Adult literacy rates are lowest in sub-Saharan African and in South and West Asia (see Figure 1). In 11 countries, less than half of the adult population were able to read and write: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Haiti, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

Figure 1: Adult literacy rate, 2009

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2011

Youth literacy rates - for the population 15 to 24 years - are generally higher than adult literacy rates, due to increased school attendance rates among younger generations. The global youth literacy rate was 89.3% in 2009, compared to 89.0% in 2008. The youth illiterate population fell from 130.6 million in 2008 to 127.3 million in 2009. Youth literacy rates are lowest in sub-Saharan Africa (see Figure 2) and the five countries worldwide with youth literacy rates below 50% are from this region: Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali and Niger.

Figure 2: Youth literacy rate, 2009

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2011

Reference

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2011. Adult and youth literacy. UIS fact sheet no. 16, September. Montreal: UIS. (Download in PDF format, 350 KB)

Related articles

• Trends in adult literacy, 1990-2008
• Literacy data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics
• Adult literacy in 2007
• Disparity between male and female literacy rates
• Disparity between adult and youth literacy
• Adult literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa

External links

• International Literacy Day (UNESCO)
• Literacy data (UNESCO Institute for Statistics)

Friedrich Huebler, 30 September 2011, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2011/09/literacy.html

US online advertising spend rose 23.2% Y-o-Y in H1 2011

"Internet ad revenues rose 23.2 percent—to a record $14.9 billion—in the first half of 2011, according to figures released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC US). The rate of growth more than doubled year-over-year, as last year’s first-half ad revenues of $12.1 billion had represented an 11.3 percent increase over 2009.
Internet ad revenues for the second quarter alone also reached new heights, increasing 24.1 percent to $7.7 billion. That performance compares to last year’s same-period revenues of $6.2 billion, up 13.9 percent from 2009.
Display-related advertising—which includes banner ads, rich media, digital video and sponsorships—totaled more than $5.5 billion in the first six months of 2011. Display increased 27.1 percent over the same period in 2010, substantially exceeding the previous year’s growth rate of 16 percent. Digital video once again commanded double-digit growth—up 42.1 percent over a year ago, and moved close to the $1 billion mark with $891 million in half year 2011 revenue.
Display accounted for 37 percent of all interactive spend in the first half of 2011, with search remaining the leading online category at 49 percent of the total—nearly $7.3 billion. Search and Display each grew about 27 percent year-over-year, with Search more than doubling its previous year’s growth rate of 11.6 percent.
In other online ad formats, dollars spent on lead generation increased 25.4 percent over the same period in 2010, but classified ad dollars were down 2 percent and email spend decreased 34.2 percent.
IAB and PwC US looked at revenue models supporting online ads. Ads using performance-based models increased faster than ads using impression-based models, rising to $9.6 billion. Impression-based ad spend did grow by 10.8 percent, though that pricing model accounted for only 31 percent of total ads, down from 35 percent year-over-year."
Source:  Press release from the IAB, 28th September 2011

Facebook's share of time spent online in the US, by day of week

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Source:  Data from Hitwise Experian, reported in their blog, 27th September 2011

Where US consumers spend their money

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Source:  Data for 2010 from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, reported by the New York Times, 27th September 2011

Propensity to engage in mCommerce in the UK

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Source:  Data from MobileSquared, reported in a press release, 29th September 2011

Smartphone operating system shares in Europe

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Source:  Press release from comScore, based on their MobiLens service, 13th September 2011
Based on UK, France, Germany, Italy & Spain only

Spotify gained a million new users after integration with the Facebook homepage ticker

"At f8 last Thursday, music services such as Spotify, Vevo, Rdio and Mog gained the ability to publish the listening activity of their users to Facebook’s new home page Ticker. The exposure to the friends of their users through the tickers has led to big gains for some music partners.
Most significantly, Spotify has gained one million new monthly active Facebook-integrated users since f8 to reach 4.4 million MAU. It spiked from 1.12 million to 3.25 million daily active users the day after f8, and appears to be settling back to roughly a quarter million new DAU. Rdio, MOG, and Deezer have also seen significant gains in their numbers of Facebook-integrated users."
Source:  Data from Inside Facebook, collected from looking at app users, reported on 26th September 2011