Practices and Competencies - Evidence from an Adult Literacy Survey in Germany

Abstract

Basic competencies like reading and writing skills are seen as the necessary fundament for independent and far-reaching social participation. The proportions of adults who only have low reading and writing skills differ from country to country. However, even in highly developed countries there are larger proportions of adults who perform low in literacy assessments. The second German literacy survey 'LEO 2018' confirms this observation. About 12.1 % of the German speaking adult population (aged 18-64) has remarkable difficulties in reading and writing. In comparison to the first round of the survey which was carried out in 2010 the proportion of low literate adults in Germany is declining. This contribution refers to results of the current survey, offers possible explanations for the trend between 2010 and 2018, describes the composition of the low-literate subpopulation and discusses the main predictors for low literacy. Unlike most former surveys, the LEO survey 2018 also gathered information about literacy related practices in different fields of life (finance, digital, health, and politics). Adults who have difficulties with reading and writing on average perform most literacy related practices less often.