The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) provides the richest data available about the place of books in Americans’ lives. Conducted every five years by the National Endowment for the Arts, the survey generates data that permit an analysis of the trend in book reading in the United States over time. These data can also be compared to similar data collected for the European Union and thereby provide some measure of U.S. book-reading rates relative to those of other Western nations. The SPPA is also a source for data on the reading of literature specifically, and these findings are reviewed further on in this indicator.

According to the SPPA, the number of Americans who read at least one book of fiction or nonfiction in the previous 12 months (outside of work or school requirements) decreased in the decade between the early 1990s and the early 2000s. Thus, whereas in 1992, 61% of Americans reported having read a book for pleasure during the previous year, in 2002, 57% reported having done so (Figure V-3a). Although every age group registered a decline in book reading during that period, the greatest decrease occurred among young adults, with levels for 18-to-24-year-olds dropping 9 percentage points.

Figure V-3a, Full Size Supporting Data

In spite of the decline in book reading in the United States, anecdotal evidence suggests that book clubs (discussion groups) are currently a popular phenomenon. Data measuring the actual extent of Americans’ participation in them are scarce, however, and not available through the SPPA. The one survey of a nationally representative sample of adults that investigates book club involvement, a 2005 study sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, found that 6% of American adults who read for pleasure and primarily in English, or 3.4% of all adults,¹ participated in book clubs (full text of the study, entitled Poetry in America, can be found online at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/foundation/initiative_poetryamerica.html).

Whether such clubs are widespread outside the United States is unclear. What is apparent from a comparison of SPPA data with those collected by the European Union’s statistical agency, Eurostat, is that the nation’s 2002 book-reading rates were well above those of many European nations. As Figure V-3b shows, the United States ranked among the top third of nations surveyed in terms of the percentage of the population that read fiction or nonfiction for pleasure. Book reading was more common in the United States than in such countries as Italy, Germany, and France but less so than in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Scandinavian nations of Finland and Sweden (the top-ranked country). In 2002, the United States also ranked fairly well internationally with respect to its percentage of “strong” readers, or persons who had read eight or more books outside of work or school over the previous year (Figure V-3c). Although the percentage for the United Kingdom was again higher, the United States’ rate, 23%, was fourth, along with that of the Netherlands and Denmark, out of the 16 countries surveyed.

Figure V-3b, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure V-3c, Full Size Supporting Data

As noted previously, the SPPA includes data not only on general national book-reading trends but also on the reading of literature per se in the United States. What these data reveal is that, whereas general levels of U.S. book reading dropped slightly between 1982 and 2002, literature suffered a more pronounced loss of popularity during that time. This decline, though apparent among Americans of all ages, was again especially pronounced among young people. Thus, while the percentage of Americans of all ages who read novels, short stories, plays, and poetry fell—from 57% in 1982 to 47% in 2002 (Figure V-3d), the rates for 18-to-24-year-olds and 25-to-34-year-olds plummeted 17 and 14 percentage points, respectively, in the course of those twenty years.

Figure V-3d, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure V-3e presents these same data on literature reading in such a way as to make the relative importance of two types of effects on reading rates more apparent. The first of these, the cohort effect, speaks to the influence of the respondents’ generation on their tendency to read literature. The other effect is that of the respondents’ age at the time of the interview. As the figure illustrates, the eldest three cohorts were fairly similar with respect to their rates of reading literature at different stages of their lives. For example, at ages 45–54, between approximately 52% and 57% of all three cohorts had read a novel, short story, poem, or play in the previous year. But the most recent cohort, consisting of those born between the late 1950s and 1960s, was substantially less likely to have done so, and for those 35–44 years old there was a difference in reading rates of over 12 percentage points between the most recent cohort and the two previous ones. The figure also reveals a negative age effect. For every cohort, literature reading rates were at least 10 percentage points lower for the oldest age group for which data were available than for the youngest. A comparable analysis of data on book reading more generally revealed similar cohort and age effects (however, because SPPA data on book reading are available for fewer cohorts, the results of the analysis were less definitive).

Figure V-3e, Full Size Supporting Data

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