The following information is taken from the OLC’s publication Literacy in Ontario, the province’s first cross-sectoral examination of the adult literacy field in Ontario.

Economic Growth

• A 1% increase in adult literacy levels would generate a 1.5% permanent increase in the GDP per capita. In Canada, this would amount to about $18 billion a year that could be re-invested in Canadians’ priorities.
• Investment in education is three times as important to economic growth over the long run as investment in physical capital such as machinery and equipment.
• Educating the least educated has a greater impact on GDP than increasing the skills of those with higher literacy skills.
• Raising a country’s literacy scores by 1% relative to the international average is associated with an eventual 2.5% relative rise in productivity and a 1.5% rise in national income per person.
• A 2% increase in wages and earnings from improvements in national literacy would provide approximately a 1.8% increase in revenue in a country that is dependent primarily on value-added tax.

Justice

• Upon arrival in correctional institutions, approximately 65% of offenders test at a completion level lower than Grade 8 and 82% lower than Grade 10.
• Research by Correctional Services Canada in the early 1990s and in 1997-98 shows that offenders who completed Adult Basic Education-Grade 10 had a 21.3% reduction in re-admissions.

Labour Market

• Over 60% of the earnings premium associated with high school graduation and slightly fewer than 50% of the earnings premium associated with a university degree can be attributed to increased literacy skills.
• People with low literacy skills are about twice as likely to be unemployed for six or more months.
• Low skilled adults have a greater chance of being unemployed than those possessing higher literacy skills, and the duration of unemployment for those with low skills may also be greater. Those with low literacy skills are clearly at a serious disadvantage with respect to access to the labour market.

Health

• More than half of working age adults in Canada (55% or 11.7 million) are estimated to have less than adequate health literacy skills. 88% of adults over the age of 65 (3.1 million) appear to be in this situation.
• Canadians with the lowest health literacy scores are 2.5 times as likely to see themselves as being in fair or poor health as those with skills at level 4 or 5. This relationship holds even after removing the impact of age, gender, education, mother tongue, immigration, and Aboriginal status.
• Canadians with the lowest health-literacy skills were found to be more than 2 ½ times as likely to be receiving income support.

Poverty

• Adults who score at levels 1 and 2 on the numeracy scale are more likely to obtain social assistance payments from the state.
• Between 22% and 50% of adults with lower levels of literacy live in low-income households, compared with only 8% of those with high-level literacy skills.
• 65% of social assistance recipients have low literacy skills.
• Adults living in low-income households receive less job-related training and education, and engage less frequently in activities (both on the job and in the home) that favour the development of literacy abilities.

Learning Disabilities

• Learning disabilities affect at least 10% of Canadians. More than 80% of these have trouble learning to read.
• In the United States, adults who had a learning disability had lower average prose, document, and quantitative literacy than adults who did not have a learning disability.

Literacy and Persons with Disabilities

• 1 in 7 (3.4 million) Canadians aged 15 years and over has a disability.
• Approximately 50% of Canadian adults with disabilities experience literacy challenges.
• 20% of adults with disabilities have less than a Grade 9 education, as compared to 8.1% of adults without a disability who have less than a Grade 9 education.
• 50% of adults with disabilities have an annual income of less than $15,000.
• Persons with disabilities make up a disproportionate amount of the 48% of Canadian adults who function at the 2 lowest literacy levels.

Civic Engagement

• Literacy is not just for understanding, but also for thinking critically and responding. To participate fully in civic life, citizens must have the skills necessary to access and act upon information. Literacy is more than just a tool. It is a necessity for civic engagement.
• Literacy is key to participating in the democratic process. Literacy groups have observed that persons with less literacy do not generally vote. The voting process requires some fairly sophisticated literacy skills including: registering to vote, understanding rights, deciphering a ballot, understanding all the campaign literature, and feeling confident to make an informed decision.