As reading declines in America, the gap between readers and nonreaders continues to widen, giving avid readers an increasing educational, economic, and leadership advantage.

Americans are reading less than at any point in decades, and reading proficiency continues to decline. As the gap between readers and nonreaders widens, those who continue to read may gain an increasingly significant educational, economic, and leadership advantage.

The long-term decline in reading habits among Americans is well documented. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) data tracked through the American Time Use Survey show the share of adults who read a book for pleasure in the past 12 months falling from 61% in 1992 to 49% in 2022. The same peer-reviewed analysis found that the share of Americans reading for pleasure on an average day fell from 28% in the early 2000s to 16% in 2023.

Among children, the decline is even sharper. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) long-term trend data show that the share of 13-year-olds who read for fun almost every day fell from 35% in 1984 to just 14% in both 2023 and 2025, the lowest level since the question was first asked. Nine-year-olds show a similar pattern, with the share falling from 53% in 1984 to 37% in 2025.

Reading proficiency is also declining across all grade levels. Roughly 40% of fourth graders and one-third of eighth graders now score below the NAEP Basic level, the largest shares since 2002 and the highest in NAEP history, respectively. Twelfth graders posted their lowest average reading score in more than three decades in 2024: 283 on NAEP’s 500-point scale.

That was three points below the 2019 average and 10 points below the first assessment in 1992. Only 35% were considered prepared for entry-level college reading coursework, down from 37% in 2019. The decline extends into adulthood. Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data show that U.S. adults’ literacy scores fell by 12 points from 2017 to 2023. Today, 28% of adults, or 58.9 million people, score at Level 1 proficiency or below, up from 19% in 2017.

The decline is not uniform. NAEP’s own percentile breakdowns show scores for top-performing students holding roughly steady while scores for the lowest performers fall sharply, widening the gap to its largest margin on record at both the 12th grade and 13-year-old level. NCES’s commissioner has described this as “a dwindling middle” in U.S. skills.

A small subset of heavy readers accounts for a disproportionate share of all reading. A December 2025 YouGov survey found that 19% of Americans account for the majority of books read nationally. Separate data show that only about 14% of adults read 20 or more books per year.

Research has shown that people who continue to read have measurably better career outcomes. Research using PIAAC data found that a 40-point increase in literacy scores is associated with roughly a 6% increase in hourly wages, while a similar increase in numeracy scores is associated with wage gains of 12% to 15% internationally and as high as 28% in the United States, the largest premium of any country studied.

A 2024 survey of frontline employers found that 40% consider low literacy widespread within their own organizations, while one-third said their average employee’s literacy was not sufficient to do the job well. The findings establish a direct link between reading proficiency and workplace advancement.

The NAEP finding that scores for top-performing students have remained stable while every other percentile has declined suggests a labor market in which reading proficiency is already a gatekeeper, while fewer people are acquiring the skills needed to pass through that gate.

Whether this widening gap will translate into avid readers becoming a distinct, more knowledgeable leadership class is a projection, not an established finding. What the data do establish is the underlying trend on which that projection is based: a shrinking share of frequent readers, a growing share of adults with low literacy proficiency, and a widening gap between the two that shows no sign of narrowing.

Spencer Klavan, a Yale and Oxford-trained classicist and associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books, wrote that if these trends continue, reading will revert to what it was before mass literacy: a skill held by a small, deliberate minority rather than the general public. The Atlantic‘s Rose Horowitch reached a similar conclusion in her August 2026 cover story, “The Age of Reading Is Over.” Drawing on the same NEA and American Time Use Survey data cited above, she argued that America has entered what she calls a “postliterate world.”

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