Literacy on the planet today is only 84%.
781 million people around the world, or just about every tenth inhabitant of the Earth are still illiterate.
According to the report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the eradication of illiteracy proceeded rapidly after the Second World War, but in the present century has slowed considerably. From 1950 to 1990, literacy increased from 56 to 76%, and in the next ten years it increased to 82%. However, since 2000, this figure has added only 2%.
This is due, in general, to the extremely low level of social and economic development of the countries of Central Africa and West Asia, home to 597 million people who can not read and write. "They account for 76% of all illiterate people in the world," the document says. The only encouraging fact is that the literacy rate among young people in the states of South and West Asia is significantly higher than that of the older generation.
In general, literacy among boys and girls aged 15 to 24 years around the world, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, is now 90%. This indicator seems high, but still it means that 126 million young people do not know how to read and write. Literacy among boys is 6% higher than among girls, and the biggest gap in this area falls on the poorest Muslim countries. Of the 781 million illiterate people in the world, two-thirds are women.
Country statistics
In India, there are the largest number of illiterate inhabitants - 286 million people. Further on, China (54 million), Pakistan (52 million), Bangladesh (44 million), Nigeria (41 million), Ethiopia (27 million), Egypt (15 million), Brazil (13 million), Indonesia (12 million ) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (12 million). These ten countries account for more than two-thirds of all illiterate inhabitants of the Earth.