Two in Five Kids Are Read To Less Than Four Days a Week

When it comes to sup­port­ing lit­er­ary devel­op­ment in young kids, the advice to par­ents is clear: Crack open a book — dai­ly — and read aloud to your child.

This sim­ple act — mod­el­ing a love of read­ing and sup­port­ing — the habit of read­ing yields out­sized returns. Strong lit­er­ary skills set the stage for future learn­ing and aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess, accord­ing to research.

Yet, from 2015 to 2016, 42% kids in the nation’s five-and-under age group had fam­i­ly mem­bers sit­ting down and read­ing to them less than four days a week.

Across the Unit­ed States, the rates for this sta­tis­tic range from high of 56% in Alaba­ma to a low of 22% in Maine.

Race and eth­nic­i­ty appear to make a dif­fer­ence, too. More than half of all young chil­dren who iden­ti­fy as Amer­i­can Indi­an, Lati­no, or Asian and Pacif­ic Islander are read to less than four times a week.

Access more edu­ca­tion data on the KIDS COUNT Data Center:

• Chil­dren under age 6 whose fam­i­ly mem­bers read to them less than four days/​week
• Chil­dren under age 6 whose fam­i­ly mem­bers read to them less than four days/​week, by race and ethnicity