How many Italians are reading and who are they?

ISTAT data from 2020 help build a picture of the situation.

  1. Readership has been declining since 2010; in 2020 only 41.4% of the population has read at least one book in the past year.
  2. The female population shows a greater propensity to read as early as age 6: overall 47.1% of women, compared to 33.5%  of men, have read at least one book during the year.
  3. More young people between the ages of 11 and 14 (58.6%) read more than all other age groups.
  4. More women (46.4%) read than men (36.1%).
  5. The audience most fond of reading is girls aged 11 to 24 (more than 60% have read at least one book in the year). The share of female readers falls below the national average after age 60, while for males it is always less than 50 percent except for boys aged 11 to 14 years slightly higher.
  6. Reading is linked to educational level: 72.8% of college graduates read, 49.1% of high school graduates read, and only 26.8% among those with an elementary school diploma.
  7. Territorial gaps persist: fewer than one in three people read in the southern regions (29.2%), while those in the northeast reach the highest percentage (44.3%) and 48.5 in the northwest and 44.3% in the center.
  8. Less than half of the readers (44.6%) say they have read at most three books in the 12 months prior to the interview; these are the so-called “weak readers” among whom are just under half of male readers (48.5%) and people between the ages of 11 and 14 (47.2%). 15.2% count themselves among “strong readers” (with at least 12 books read in the past year). Women’s greater propensity to read is also found in the intensity of reading: 16.7% say they read an average of one book per month compared to 13.3% of men.
  9. In 2016, about one in ten households had no books at all in the home, a figure that has now been constant for almost two decades.
  10. Among those with both parents who are readers, 78.1% of 6-18 year olds read; it stands at 64.5% if it is only the mother who has the reading habit and 63.8% if it is only the father. In contrast, the share of 6-18 year olds reading drops to 36.3% if both parents are not book readers.

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