Global Literacy Rate by Age Group and Sex (2016)
About This Dataset
Global Literacy Rate by Age Group and Sex (2016)
This chart presents global literacy rates across four age groups - adults, youth, working-age adults, and elderly - broken down by sex, based on UNESCO data for 2016.
Analysis
Youth (aged 15-24) consistently show the highest literacy rates across all gender categories, reflecting improved access to education over time. The elderly population (65+) has the lowest literacy rates, with women at 73% compared to men at 83%, highlighting historical gender inequalities in education access. The gender parity index of 0.92 for adults overall indicates women remain measurably behind men in literacy globally, while the youth GPI of 0.96 signals that the gap is narrowing significantly with younger generations - a promising trend for future parity.
Source:
UNESCO Institute for Statistics
Key Findings
🏆
Youth (15-24) - Men leads in Literacy Rate (%) with 93 in 2016.
📊
Average Literacy Rate (%) in 2016: 85.42 · median: 86.
↔️
Gap in 2016: Youth (15-24) - Men is 1.3× larger than Elderly (65+) - Women.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- UNESCO Institute for Statistics
- Coverage
- 12 entities · 2016 · 12 observations
- Measure
- Literacy Rate (%)
- Last updated
- 29 June 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 2016.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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