July 22, 2004 | Read Time: 1 minute
People who read literature in their leisure time are much more likely to perform volunteer and charity work, to visit art museums, and to attend performing-arts events, according to a report issued this month by the National Endowment for the Arts. The report holds bad news for charities, however: Fewer than half of American adults now read literature, defined as novels, short stories, poetry, or plays.
“As this report unambiguously demonstrates, readers play a more active and involved role in their communities,” Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, said in the preface to the report. “The decline in reading, therefore, parallels a larger retreat from participation in civic and cultural life,” said Mr. Gioia. “The long-term implications of this study not only affect literature but all the arts — as well as social activities such as volunteerism, philanthropy, and even political engagement.”
Forty-three percent of adults who read literature said that they volunteer and do charity work, compared with 17 percent of adults who do not read literature, the report said. “There is a striking difference between the rates of volunteer or charity work of literary readers and nonreaders,” said the report.
The report documented an overall decline of 10 percentage points in literary readers from 1982 to 2002, representing a loss of 20 million potential readers.
The report, “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America,” presents results from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, which was conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002 at the request of the NEA.
Free copies of the report are available online at http://www.arts.gov.
