The Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey: Age and Literacy

4. Age Cohorts

• Do the differences in the distributions of literacy skill between men and women change with age?
• Are the relationships between skill-level, age and gender the same for different skills?

This section examines these questions.

Prose literacy, age and gender

The distributions of prose literacy skill by age group and gender are shown in Figure 4.1. 

Figure 4.1: Prose literacy, age and gender, ALL only

Note:

Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Figure 4.1 shows that for all age groups (except 55−65-year-olds), women had higher overall prose literacy skills than men (and for 16−24-year-olds and 35−44-year-olds these skills were substantially higher). Among 55−65-year-olds, women and men had approximately the same overall prose literacy skills.

Figure 4.1 also shows that the differences in overall prose literacy skill between men and women result from, in most age groups, women having larger percentages at level 3 than men, and smaller percentages at level 1.

Document literacy, age and gender

The distributions of document literacy skill by age group and gender are shown in Figure 4.2.

Figure 4.2: Document literacy, age and gender, ALL only

Note:

Figure 4.2 shows that among 16−24-year-olds, women had substantially higher overall document literacy skills than men; among 25−34 and 35−44-year-olds women and men had approximately the same document literacy skills; and among 45−54 and 55−65 year-olds men had substantially higher document literacy skills than women.

Numeracy, age and gender

The distributions of numeracy skill by age group and gender are shown in Figure 4.3.

Figure 4.3: Numeracy, age and gender, ALL only

Note:

Figure 4.3 shows that for all age groups men had substantially higher overall numeracy skills than women. Across all age groups, this results from men having substantially higher percentages at level 4 or 5, and for 25−65-year-olds lower percentages at level 1. For all age groups (except 55−65-year-olds), men and women had roughly the same percentages at level 3; among 55−65-year-olds the percentage of men at level 3 was substantially higher than that of women.

Problem-solving, age and gender

The distributions of problem-solving skill by age group and gender are shown in Figure 4.4.

Figure 4.4: Problem-solving, age and gender, ALL only

Note:

Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Figure 4.4 shows that in contrast with the other skill domains, only among 55−65-year-olds was there a difference in overall problem-solving skill between the genders (where men had higher skills than women).