Youth vs Elderly Literacy Rate by Region (2016)
About This Dataset
Youth vs Elderly Literacy Rate by Region (2016)The comparison between youth and elderly literacy rates serves as a proxy for five decades of progress. Southern Asia shows the most dramatic generational leap - 89% youth literacy versus just 42% among the elderly, a 47-point gap. Sub-Saharan Africa follows with a 39-point gap (75% vs 36%), and Northern Africa and Western Asia with 36 points (90% vs 54%). In contrast, Central Asia and Europe and Northern America show minimal differences, as literacy was already near-universal among older generations. Globally, the youth literacy rate of 91% is 13 percentage points above the elderly rate of 78%, reflecting meaningful, sustained progress in access to education worldwide.
Key Findings
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- UNESCO Institute for Statistics
- Coverage
- 16 entities · 2016 · 16 observations
- Measure
- Literacy Rate (%)
- Last updated
- 29 June 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
- 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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