The percentage of American adults who read at least one book of fiction or nonfiction in the previous 12 months, including print books or electronic books (outside of work or school requirements), continued to decline, falling to the lowest level on record in 2022 (Indicator V-04a). In 1992, 61% of Americans had read a book for pleasure during the previous year, but by 2022 only 48.5% had done so.

From 1992 to 2022, the greatest decline in book-reading rates occurred among adults under the age of 55. For Americans age 55 or older, book-reading rates fell by a much smaller amount over the 30 years for which we have data, even with notable drops among older Americans from 2017 to 2022.1

In 2022, the U.S. book-reading rate among 25-to-64-year-olds (48.87%) was comparable to the rates in Slovakia and Latvia, but substantially lower than the rates in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Sweden, and Norway, which were all above 70% (Indicator V-04b).

In spite of the overall decline in the percentage of American adults reading at least one book each year, their participation in book clubs and reading groups increased (Indicator V-04c). In 2022, approximately 6% of Americans engaged with books in this way, up from 3.5% in 2012. Women were more likely to participate than were men, and the higher a person’s education level the more likely they were to have been part of such a group. Less than 2% of adults with only a high school education participated in a book group, compared to approximately 14% of those with graduate or professional degrees (Indicator V-04d).

The 2022 SPPA also asked respondents whether they engaged with literature via audiobooks. If the book-reading rate is expanded to include audiobook-only readers, the reading rate for American adults increases to 52%. Adults age 65 or older were the most likely to be print-only readers, while adults ages 25–44 were more likely to engage with digital formats and audiobooks (Indicator V-04e). The higher a person’s education level, the more likely they were to engage with books in a digital format or as audiobooks and the less likely they were to be print-only readers (Indicator V-04f).