Never underestimate the delayed power of Oprah and Harry Potter

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Monday, January 12, 2009 - 1:59 PM Share

Last week I blogged about an study conducted by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences suggesting that book-reading declined between the early 1990s and the early 2000s.

Well, good news, the National Endowment of the Arts released their own study today, and it suggests that this trend has been reversed:

For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature, according to a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts...
"At a time of immense cultural pessimism, the NEA is pleased to announce some important good news. Literary reading has risen in the U.S. for the first time in a quarter century," said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. "This dramatic turnaround shows that the many programs now focused on reading, including our own Big Read, are working. Cultural decline is not inevitable."

Among the highlights of the study:

Young adults show the most rapid increases in literary reading. Since 2002, 18-24 year olds have seen the biggest increase (nine percent) in literary reading, and the most rapid rate of increase (21 percent). This jump reversed a 20 percent rate of decline in the 2002 survey, the steepest rate of decline since the NEA survey began.
Since 2002, reading has increased at the sharpest rate (+20 percent) among Hispanic Americans, Reading rates have increased among African Americans by 15 percent, and among Whites at an eight percent rate of increase.
For the first time in the survey's history, literary reading has increased among both men and women. Literary reading rates have grown or held steady for adults of all education levels.
Fiction (novels and short stories) accounts for the new growth in adult literary readers.
Online readers also report reading books. Eighty-four percent of adults who read literature (fiction, poetry, or drama) on or downloaded from the Internet also read books, whether print or online.

So maybe Oprah and Harry Potter are having an effect after all.

UPDATE: Here's a link to the actual report (.pdf).