Youth Literacy Rate and 50-Year Progress by Region and Sex (2016)
About This Dataset
Youth Literacy Rate and 50-Year Progress by Region and Sex (2016)Women have made substantially greater literacy gains than men over the past 50 years across almost every region. Globally, young women improved their literacy rate by 17 percentage points relative to elderly women, compared to just 9 points for men. The most striking female progress occurred in Southern Asia, where young women are nearly 59 percentage points more literate than elderly women, compared to a 34-point gain for men. Sub-Saharan Africa and Northern Africa and Western Asia show similarly large female gains of 46 and 44 points respectively. In Central Asia and Europe and Northern America, near-universal literacy already existed among elderly women, leaving little room for improvement. These trends reflect decades of expanded girls' education globally, though gender gaps persist in several developing regions.
Key Findings
Youth Literacy Rate and 50-Year Progress by Region and Sex (2016)
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- UNESCO Institute for Statistics
- Coverage
- 48 entities · 2016 · 48 observations
- Measure
- Youth Literacy Rate (%) and Gain vs Elderly Rate (percentage points)
- 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.
Rankings & Full Data
48 records · Youth Literacy Rate (%) and Gain vs Elderly Rate (percentage points) · ranked by 2016
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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Southern Asia made the most dramatic improvement in adult literacy between 1990 and 2016, rising from 46% to 72% - a gai...
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