The data shows that improvements in literacy preceded the Industrial Revolution and in many ways the rise of living standards became only possible thanks to an increasingly better educated public. Towards the end of the 19th century the share had increased to almost three-quarters for both genders.Īs the center of the Industrial Revolution and one of the first countries that established democratic institutions, England was in important aspects the center of the development of modernity. The expansion of education led to a reduction in education gender inequality. Here, the majority of men (61%) were unable to write their name in the late 16th century for women it was much lower.īy 1840 two-thirds of men and about half of women were literate in England. The first observations refer to men and women in the diocese of Norwich, which lies to the Northeast of London. The historical estimates are based on the percentage of men women who could sign documents, a very basic definition of literacy that is often used in historical research on education. This chart shows historical estimates of literacy in England over the last five centuries. You can read more about the expansion of education systems around the world in our entry on Financing Education. And the rate of growth really climbed after the middle of the 20th century, when the expansion of basic education became a global priority. As we can see, literacy rates grew constantly but rather slowly until the beginning of the twentieth century.
The following visualization presents estimates of world literacy for the period 1800-2016. It was only in the 19th and 20th centuries that rates of literacy approached universality in early-industrialized countries. 2 In fact, while the ambition of universal literacy in Europe was a fundamental reform born from the Enlightenment, it took centuries for it to happen. It was only until the Middle Ages that book production started growing and literacy among the general population slowly started becoming important in the Western World.
While the earliest forms of written communication date back to about 3,500-3,000 BCE, literacy remained for centuries a very restricted technology closely associated with the exercise of power.
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