According to the Department of Labor, American households spent an average of a hundred and sixty-three dollars on reading in 1995 and a hundred and twenty-six dollars in 2005. The Book Industry Study Group estimates that sales fell from 8.27 books per person in 2001 to 7.93 in 2006. In 2006, only forty-three per cent said so, including those who read online. In January 1994, forty-nine per cent of respondents told the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that they had read a newspaper the day before. Since 1990, circulation has declined steadily, and in 2006 there were just 52.3 million weekday papers-about 0.17 per person. In 1970, according to Editor & Publisher International Year Book, there were 62.1 million weekday newspapers in circulation-about 0.3 papers per person. This decline is not news to those who depend on print for a living. chairman, Dana Gioia, wrote, “Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.” released a follow-up report, “To Read or Not to Read,” which showed correlations between the decline of reading and social phenomena as diverse as income disparity, exercise, and voting.

The proportion fell to fifty-four per cent in 1992, and to 46.7 per cent in 2002.

In 1982, 56.9 per cent of Americans had read a work of creative literature in the previous twelve months. The results, first reported by the N.E.A. You wouldn’t think so, however, if you consulted the Census Bureau and the National Endowment for the Arts, who, since 1982, have asked thousands of Americans questions about reading that are not only detailed but consistent. If you didn’t read the fine print, you might think that reading was on the rise. And, this August, seventy-three per cent of respondents to another poll said that they had read a book of some kind, not excluding those read for work or school, in the past year. The question was even looser in 19, when the General Social Survey found that roughly seventy per cent of Americans had read a novel, a short story, a poem, or a play in the preceding twelve months. In 1978, a survey found that fifty-five per cent of respondents had read a book in the previous six months. Pollsters began asking the question with more latitude. In 1955, only seventeen per cent said they were.

In 1937, twenty-nine per cent of American adults told the pollster George Gallup that they were reading a book. A recent study has shown a steep decline in literary reading among schoolchildren.

Twilight books