Nationwide
- Two- thirds of students who can not read proficiently by the end of fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare
- Nearly 1 billion people in the 21st century do not know how to read, two-thirds of them are women
- 85 percent of juveniles in the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate
- More then 60% of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate
- One child in four grows up not knowing how to read
- 43% of adults at the lowest literacy level live in poverty, while only 5% of people with the highest level live in poverty
- 3 out of 4 food stamp recipients are functionally illiterate
- 16 to 19 year old girls who can not read proficiently are 6 times more likely to have a child out of wedlock than girls who can read
New Mexico
New Mexico deals with 5 levels of literacy, with 1 being illiterate and 5 being beyond proficient
- 20% of New Mexicans 16 or older are at level 1, meaning they have a hard time picking out words in a news article
- 46% of New Mexicans are at level 2 or below, as a bench mark, two-thirds of jobs require levels 3 and up
- An estimated 899,115 adults are functionally illiterate in New Mexico
- 25% of adults 21 and older do not have a high school diploma or an equivalent
Bernalillo County
Total population of 480,577 people
- Adults with less than a 9th grade education, 6.9%, 33,159 people
- Adults with less than a 12th grade education, 17.9%, 86,023 people
- Adults at Literacy Level 2 or below, 38%, 182,619
- Children and Adults who speak only limited english, 32.1%, 154,265 people
- People in poverty, 14.6%, 70,164 people
- Of people in poverty percent that are children, 19.6%, 13,752 children
Statistics from Begin to Read and the National Assessment of Adult Literacy