LITERACY AND CHILDREN’S HEALTH
While it is never too late to encourage and foster literacy skills, research clearly shows a long-term impact of positive attitudes toward books and a commitment to literacy from the earliest ages, even before formal K–12 schooling has begun. The powerful influence of books and literacy reveals itself across a variety of metrics—from academic success to social-emotional skills to physical and mental health. Educators know that home literacy environments are critical throughout childhood; by age 18, the average child in the United States will spend only 13% of his or her waking time in school (Wherry 2004). What’s more, only 40% of U.S. three- and four-year-olds are enrolled in school (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). Children from homes that foster literacy are more likely to achieve future academic success than their peers from homes without books. Students with more books at home have higher educational attainment , with children growing up in homes with many books going on to receive, on average, three years more schooling than children from bookless homes, regardless of their parents' education, occupation, and economic status (Evans et al., 2010). Data suggest that reading interventions are most effective when administered to preschool-age children (Hume et al., 2015). Those children who are read to at least three times a week at home are more likely to recognize each letter of the alphabet, count to 20, write their names, and read or pretend to read when they enter school (Nord, 1999). Additionally, children’s vocabulary when entering first grade predicts their reading comprehension level much later, in the eleventh grade (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998). These advances hold true even as students move through formal educational settings: “if a child does not learn to read well within the first few years of school, then the chances of poor academic performance increase significantly” over the course of their schooling (Chaney, 2014, p. 29). While there can be no doubt that reading skills and a commitment to literacy positively impact students’ future academic success as well as their long-term economic and social growth, research points to an additional, even more powerful outcome: Reading makes us healthier–physically and mentally.
READING FOR LIFE: THE IMPACT OF YOUTH LITERACY ON HEALTH OUTCOMES 4
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