News

The countries that read the most books, mapped

The countries that read the most books, mapped
Today Explained: How Banning Books Can Backfire
Indy

Finland is the world's most literate nation – if you look at this data from 2016 about literacy achievement tests and support.

If you rank nations only on their reading assessment results, Singapore would come top, followed by South Korea, Japan and China.

But which countries read the most?

The research was undertaken to answer this very question in 2005, with NOP's Culture Score Media Habits index.

Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

The research found that consumers in the UK and the US read below the global average (just over five hours a week for both), as the below chart by Statista shows.

Statista

According to the index, India read the most, followed by Thailand and China.

Eurostat also measured the amount of books that some countries have read in the past year in 2011.

Picture:Picture: EurostatStatista

The amount of 'no books' makes for grim reading – or lack of it, particularly considering that factors like poverty likely limit access to books.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The Conversation (0)
x