Seattle Ranks Most Literate City

Seattle is the nation’s most literate city, followed by Minneapolis, Washington, DC, Atlanta, and San Francisco, according to “America’s Most Literate Cities 2005,” a recent study that surveys whether citizens in 69 cities actually do read, rather than if they can read. El Paso, TX, and Stockton, CA, came in dead last.

What does it take to make it on the list? Library resources, newspaper circulation, magazine publishers, education level, the number of bookstores, and Internet capability are all determining factors when compared to overall population, says John W. Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University and the study’s author.

The number of school media personnel per 1,000 public school students and the number of branch libraries per 10,000 people were also criteria used to gauge a city’s library score. St. Louis, MO, which topped the list in the library category, came in as the 15th most literate city.

Although the number of school libraries doesn’t have a direct impact on determining overall literacy rates, the lack of school libraries has a direct correlation to low literacy rates, Miller says. Los Angeles and Santa Ana, CA, for example, ranked 68 and 69, respectively, when it came to their library services, and 60 and 62, respectively, in their overall literacy rates.

One interesting fact that came out of the three-year study is that the presence of retail bookstores is positively associated with the quality of libraries. So, it’s not a question of whether people buy books or check them out: they do both or neither, the study says.