[ExI] Worldwide reading habits (was: abandoning hope - the queuing experience)

Fri Nov 2 22:15:02 UTC 2007

Hi Amara,
  while I really appreciate the statistics you are showing us, I'm kind of skeptical about such measures as I was after reading the ones you gave for economics.
  For what concerns the economical ones, for example, it seems impossible that several 3rd world countries are more "competitive" than Italy. What is really meant with that? Their measures are just a way to rationalize something that is quite complicated (as any social phenomenon) to quantify.
   The size of the economy is considered in the analysis as I understand it but I think it doesn't have the right weight. 
  I'm not an economist but the list seems quite non-sensical to me.
  How is possible that Switzerland is at the second place? With an rating almost as good as US?
  It seems that the Economic  Forum uses "opinions" of businessmen to assess the measures, not very scientific way to do things.

  About the readings, again, statistics are fine, but believe me every European (or anybody from anywhere else)  that comes to US immediately notices  how uneducated people in general are. Now, I know this is a generalization, but it is a pretty valid one. I know there are exceptional minds and intellectual in this country, but in general even well educated people are educated in a very narrow field and they are pretty unaware of everything else, from history to geography, from literature to art. 
  The educated people in Italy, in particular scientists are extremely well rounded. You can talk about politics with them, you can discuss current events in the light of history and past events, they mention philosophers and thinkers from ancient Greece and ninenteen century Germany when they want to make a point, and so on.
  I miss that...
  And about the common people, well one day I was on a bus with a book of Nietzsche and the driver started to talk to me (while I was holding for my life to the rail in the front of the bus, lol) and said that he read that book.
  How likely is that to happen in the US (not many buses here anyway...)?

Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:
  Replying to: giovanni santost 
Thu, 1 Nov 2007 10:40:14 -0700 (PDT)

Caveat: I'm passionate about books and reading. My second and third
teenage jobs were working in bookstores. In my 20s and 30s, until I moved
to Europe in 1998, I spent a few hours per week browsing in bookstores.
My personal ~1100 volume library fills half of an international shipping
container. Therefore I am sensitive to the reading habits of the people
in the places (and countries) where I have spent time and lived.

In a country as large as the US, you should know that there are strong
regional differences, and within those regions, more variations as well.
For example, the San Francisco Bay area, (my home for 14 years) has a
high density of readers and book stores, and within that area, Berkeley
probably has near the highest density of bookstores in the world. These
types of pockets of readers might look unusual compared to the rest of
the U.S. Also, we both know that education and high reading habits are
correlated.

Generally, the US is not a country of readers. While Italy, generally,
has more readers (normalized to the population) than the US, Italy is
not a country of readers compared to most of the other EU countries.
Italy's reading habits are more similar to Poland, Serbia, Slovakia,
Croatia.

SOME STATISTICS

---------------------------------------------------------

http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=3613

In the U.S.
Percentage polled who read 1 to 5 books in the last year: 30%
6 to 15 books: 23%
More than 15 books: 20%

---------------------------------------------------------

MEASURE OF READING HABITS IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA

In the following UNESCO data,

Book Production
http://www.unece.org/stats/trends/ch11/11.12.xls

I added a column of the population between the ages of 25 and 64
from:

Population data
http://www.unece.org/stats/trends/ch1/1.1.xls

and divided the book production by the number of people who are likely
to be reading. No illiteracy rates have been factored in. This number
represents a rough measure of the reading habits of readers in that
country, reading material published in their own language. Some day in
the future I would like to further distinguish the reading material
in terms of social sciences, pure and applied sciences, and literature
and arts. And I didn't finish filling in (population values) for the
Commonwealth of Independent States.

Iceland is high because they are not only prolific book publishers and
readers, but their population is also tiny.

The last column is my Rough Measure Of 'Reading Habits' in that Country.

#published
book titles Pop(25-64) #Bks/Pop (*1E3)
(25-64) MEASURE
European Union:
Austria a 8 056 4 559 976 0.00177 1.76668
Denmark 14 455 2 950 310 0.00490 4.89948
Finland 13 173 2 874 152 0.00458 4.58326
France 39 083 30 779 424 0.00127 1.26978
Germany a 71 515 46 445 344 0.00154 1.53977
Greece b 4 067 5 637 830 0.00072 0.72138
Italy 32 365 32 392 640 0.00100 0.99915 <--
Portugal b 8 331 5 499 773 0.00151 1.51479
Spain 59 174 21 984 963 0.00269 2.69157
Sweden c 12 547 4 705 984 0.00267 2.66618
United Kingdom c 110 965 31 849 788 0.00348 3.48401
Other Western Europe:
Cyprus 931 288 507 0.00323 3.22696
Iceland c 1 796 143 120 0.01255 12.54889
Malta c 237 208 842 0.00113 1.13483
Monaco d 70 19 200 0.00365 3.64583
Norway 4 985 2 392 314 0.00208 2.08376
Switzerland 18 273 4 035 791 0.00453 4.52774
Turkey 2 920 31 101 612 0.00009 0.09389
Central and Eastern Europe:
Bulgaria 4 971 4 293 864 0.00116 1.15770
Croatia 2 309 2 365 188 0.00098 0.97624
Czech Republic 12 551 5 503 813 0.00228 2.28042
Estonia 3 265 714 788 0.00457 4.56779
Hungary 10 352 5 501 250 0.00188 1.88175
Latvia 2 178 1 248 150 0.00174 1.74498
Lithuania 4 097 1 811 934 0.00226 2.26112
Poland 19 192 20 131 961 0.00095 0.95331
Romania 7 874 11 809 227 0.00067 0.66677
Serbia and Monta 5 367 5 485 626 0.00098 0.97838
Slovakia 3 153 2 814 102 0.00112 1.12043
Slovenia 3 450 1 111 536 0.00310 3.10381
The former Yugosl 733 1 039 543 0.00071 0.70512
Commonwealth of Independent States:
Armenia 516
Azerbaijan c 444
Belarus c 6 073
Georgia 697
Kazakhstan 1 223
Kyrgyzstan c 420
Republic of Moldo 1 166
Russian Federata 36 237
Tajikistan b 150
Ukraine 6 282
Uzbekistan a 1 003
North America:
Canada 22 94117 126 127 0.00134 1.33953
United States a 68 175149 233 57 0.00046 0.45683 <--
Other member countries:
Israel c 1 969 2792404.8 0.00071 0.70513

a/ Data for 1996 c/ Data for 1998
b/ Data for 1997 d/ Data for 2000

---------------------------------------------------------

>The average newpaper in Italy, is at least at the level of the New York
>Times.

I don't agree. And how often does the average Italian reader read the
whole average Italian newspaper? From all of my time spent on trains and
buses and in public places, I've observed the average reader is reading
mostly the sports section.

>The average italian news stand has wonderful magazine about art,
>science, culture that people actually read.

Science?

Did I miss more than le Scienze? I hope that that I did. le Scienze
is a small extraction (mostly) of Scientific American with a too large
proportion of advertisements (lately, it seems like half).

The statistics in my tables above is reading material published in the
country's own language. I don't have statistics to give for reading
material published in other languages, but I can comment, with my
personal experience (anecdotes).

A train or airport periodical (magazine) shop in a random place in Italy
contains an order of magnitude less material in volume, range of
subjects and languages than a random periodical shop in Germany,
Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands (which is oddly not in UNESCO's
database),...

I always have a sense that I don't have any oxygen when I'm in an
Italian magazine stand, while I feel quite at home in a Switzerland
magazine stand. But then, remember, I'm skewed.

---------------------------------------------------------

OTHER USEFUL STATISTICS
Trends in Europe and North America

Researchers per Inhabitants
http://www.unece.org/stats/trends/ch3/3.11.xls

Total Expenditure on Education as a % of GDP
http://www.unece.org/stats/trends/ch3/3.9.xls

Expenditure on Research and Development, % of GDP
http://www.unece.org/stats/trends/ch3/3.12.xls
(I've seen more recent stats somewhere, Italy is below 1.0 now, Spain
surpassed Italy a few years ago)

Ciao,
Amara

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