NEA report: Reading at Risk.(National Endowment for the Arts)

Literary reading is in dramatic decline, with fewer than half of American adults now reading literature, according to a July report by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The survey Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America reports drops in all groups studied, with the steepest rate of decline--28 percent--occurring in the youngest age groups. The study also documents an overall decline of 10 percentage points in literary readers from 1982 to 2002, representing a loss of twenty million potential readers. The rate of decline is increasing and, ...