Some 58% of Italians have not
read a single book in the past year.
According to the latest figures from national statistics
institute ISTAT, 42% of Italians over the age of 6 (about 24
million) read at least one book in 2015 that was not assigned by
a school or for professional purposes.
The figure had been 41.4% in 2014, and thus some 412,000
more citizens read a book over the course of the year. The
downward trend seen since 2012 seems to have been halted.
The ISTAT overview of reading habits in Italy in 2015 was
part of the 'Aspects of Daily Life' representative survey, which
showed that the age group that reads the most is between the
ages of 15 and 17, in which readers increased from 51.1% in 2014
to 53.9% in 2015.
Some 13.7% read at least one book per month, compared with
14.3% in 2014, while 45.5% read fewer than 3 books in the past
year.
Some 4.687 million people read or downloaded books online
or e-books: 8.2% of the overall population and 14.1% of those
who have used the internet in the past three months. Online
reading and the download of books and e-books is done mostly by
the young, with 22.4% of those between 18 and 19 who use the
internet.
The differences between men and women remained the same,
with 48.6% of women having read at least one book over the year
and only 35% of men.
Reading is the most popular among those between the ages of
15 and 24, over 60% of whom read at least one including some
66.1% of those between 15 and 17.
Females make up a greater portion of those reading ones
online (15.2% of women using the internet) than men (13.2%),
with a peak between the ages of 18 and 19 (27.8%).
Schooling is not enough to inculcate reading habits,
according to the report: family habits are crucial. Books are
read by an estimated 66.8% of children between the ages of 6 and
14 when both parents are readers and only 30.9% when their
parents do not read books.
Almost one in every ten families (9.1%, equal to about 2.3
million families) say that they do not have even a single book
in their homes. The percentage is significantly high in the
Apulia (18.2%), Calabria (16.3%) and Basilicata(16.1%) regions.
About 6% of those without books at home but who have used the
internet in the past three months have read books or e-books
online or downloaded them.
The southern regions are much less likely to read. Over 48%
of residents in northern Italy read at least one book over the
past year, compared with 28.8% in the south and 33.1% on the
islands. The region with the highest number of readers is the
northwest, with 49.6%. Metropolitan centers also have higher
reading rates, at 51% compared with 35.5% in municipalities with
fewer than 2,000 inhabitants - a further drop on the previous
year (37.2% in 2014).
The gap between areas have, however, been reduced due to
online reading and the downloading of books: 16.4% in the
north-west engage in the activity, while 11.9% do in southern
Italy. Some 16.9% of inhabitants of metropolitan areas and 13.9%
of those in small towns of between 2,001 and 10,000 inhabitants
do as well.
Italian households spent 3.339 billion euros on books in
2014 and 5.278 billion on newspapers and stationery: 11 and 18
euros per month, respectively, or 0.4% and 0.6% of their overall
spending.
Between 2010 and 2014, household spending on books,
newspapers and magazines dropped by 18%, that on stationery by
31%. The reduction was much higher than that for goods in
general (6%).
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