A Literacy Ranking for American Cities
Released: July 11, 2003
How does your city stack up in its commitment to literacy?
A comprehensive new study pieces together a literacy profile of America’s 64 largest cities, drawing from U.S. Census data, newspaper circulation rates, library resources, publishers and other public documents.
The study, authored by University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor and education Professor Jack Miller, draws on statistics from five categories and 13 different measures of literacy to provide a ranking for all cities with a population of 250,000 or more.
The winners? Minneapolis and Seattle were ranked No. 1 and No. 2 respectively, while Denver, Atlanta and San Francisco rounded out the top five. Other cities that made the Top 10 include (in descending order) Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Louisville, Portland and Cincinnati.
For a complete look at city rankings, see http://www.uww.edu/cities/
“Americans are actively interested in issues affecting their quality of life and how that quality varies from place to place,” says Miller. “Like education, environment and public health, literacy is an important dimension to the life of a city and its residents. This study looks at many of the common bookmarks of a literate community.”
All of the statistics are weighted against the overall city population, to provide a balanced comparison of resources available per capita. The database used for the rankings is composed of five categories, including education, publications, newspapers, libraries and booksellers.
By defining literacy through many sources, Miller says the study helps overcome anomalies where a city might rank extremely high or low in one category. Most of the top 10 cities fared well across many or all of the five categories.
The five categories in the survey, in more detail, are:
• Educational attainment. This category collects 2000 Census data on the total percentage of the population with a high school diploma; and the total population with bachelor’s degrees.
• Booksellers. This category collects three sets of figures provided by the American Booksellers Association (ABA), including number of retail booksellers, number of rare and used booksellers, and number of ABA members.
• Daily newspaper readership. This category looks at the audited, paid circulation rates of the major daily newspapers published within the city limits, using figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).
• Public Libraries. Four statistics are compared for each city, including total circulation; total volumes held; number of library branches and ratio of librarians to public school students.
• Periodicals. This category seeks to measure whether the city is a major publishing center, by total number of multiple periodical publishers per city and total number of publishers compared to the population.
The study has been a strong interest of Miller’s for several years. He noted that in the past decade, there have been “best city” rankings for numerous issues, including lowest crime rates, best environmental quality, and best quality of life for women and young professionals. These studies triggered Miller to begin thinking about ways that literacy could be statistically measured.
Miller says the results can often be surprising, given popular assumptions of cities that are major cultural centers. Boston and New York City, for example, scored No. 13 and No. 48, respectively. Although both cities had No. 1 rankings — New York in periodical and Boston in library holdings — they were below the median in other per capita variables.
But by comparing results against the overall population, it helps give a sense of how many people, on average, are involved in the pursuit of reading, Miller says. Regardless of how many resources exist, the main question is how many residents are taking advantage.
He adds: “I’m reminded of the Mark Twain quote, ‘A man who does not read great books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.’ ”
- Brian Mattmiller ,npa@uww.edu
