Original links are included though some may have expired.

The Numbers:

'Literary reading' rate of American adults, 1982: 57%
'Literary reading' rate of American adults, 2002: 47%

What They Mean:

The release of PPI Trade Policy Director Ed Gresser's first book, Freedom From Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy, comes in the midst of many alarming statistics about American reading habits.

• Reading rates are declining -- The National Endowment for the Arts finds in a current report, To Read or Not To Read, that frequent readers are more likely to vote, participate in sports, visit museums and get high-paying jobs -- but that with cable TV and internet competition, the rate of "literary reading" (i.e., reading books out of interest and for personal pleasure, rather than because one must read them for school or work) is falling in all American age-groups.
• Americans trail many Atlantic reading rivals -- NEA's 2004 report, Reading At Risk, found that only 57 percent of Americans had read at least one book in the previous year. This was well above the European Union's 45 percent average, but behind Sweden's 72 percent, Canada's 67 percent, Finland's 66 percent, and Britain's 63 percent. More recently, Xinhua found China's rate slightly behind the United States at just below 50 percent, and Latin American surveys suggest that Argentina's average of four books a year isn't far behind the 5.1-book figure for the United States. Other Latin countries are bit further behind, though, with Colombians at 2.4 books annually, Mexicans 2.9 and Brazilians 1.8.^*
• Printing and publishing employment are down -- Book-printing has a claim to be America's oldest manufacturing industry, launched with the Massachusetts Bay colony's publication of The Whole Booke of Psalmes in 1640. Since 2001, employment in the publishing side of America's book industry has fallen from 88,000 to 81,000, while book-printing employment has dropped from 38,000 to 30,000.

With all these grim facts in mind, buying books will evidently (1) raise one's chance for high-wage employment, (2) help keep America's book-printing workers at their jobs, (3) and help American readers stay ahead of China and France, while catching up with the Swedes, Finns, Canadians, and Brits. Readers elsewhere in the world of course have the opposite opportunity, to preserve a lead over the United States or catch up. Hint, hint.

^* France claims an average of seven books a year. But a French writer has recently written a best-seller boldly entitled "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read."

Further Reading:

Freedom from Want -- Gresser's first book is at once a defense of liberal values including enlightened foreign policy, special concern for the poor, international law and environmental quality as developed by 20th-century Americans; an exploration of their role in creating the modern global economy; a critique of some gloomier strands of 21st-century liberal thinking; a sourcebook for odd and surprising facts from brassiere tariffs to the economic life of ancient Sparta, the low-wage competition debate in 17th-century Britain, and the lives of Cambodia's modern garment-factory workers; and a set of ideas for trade and global-economy policy in the coming years. And, we hope, a good read:
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=254514
&knlgareaid=108&subsecid=206

Direct link to the Amazon.com page: http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Want-American-
Liberalism-Economy/dp/1933368624/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195584752&sr=1-1

And some surveys of U.S. and world reading habits:

NEA's Literature page has gloomy facts about the decline of American reading:
http://www.nea.gov/pub/pubLit.php

Xinhua blames China's falling readership rate on Internet obsession:
http://english.cri.cn/811/2006/04/24/272@80670.htm

Eurobarometer's slightly dated reading surveys are severe on the Portuguese and applaud the Swedes:
http://www.readingeurope.org/observatory.nsf?open

Mongolians, according to President Natsag Bagandi, are high-toned readers. The president has a high opinion -- possibly unrealistically high -- of western readers. Mongol boys and girls are fully familiar with traditional national epics like Geser and Jansar, as famous to Mongols, he writes, as the "Chanson de Roland, Nibelungenlied and El Cid" are among westerners. Mongolian students also read western and Japanese classics in translation:
http://www.accu.or.jp/appreb/09/pdf33-4/33-4P011.pdf