It may be the birthplace of Shakespeare and Austen, but polling reveals that 40 percent of adults in the UK haven’t read a single book in the last 12 months, according to online polling company YouGov.
YouGov surveyed more than 2,100 Britons in January to explore the state of reading in Great Britain, encompassing physical books, digital or e-books and audiobooks. Around one in five Britons (19 percent) read four books or less a year, with two to four being the most common response across the board.
Older Britons, those aged 65 and above, reported the highest percentage of readers (65 percent) and the most prolific readers with 19 percent having read or listened to 25 or more books in the last year. Both figures drop off with each younger cohort, with just 53 percent of adults aged 18–24 reporting having read or listened to at least one book in the last year and just 6 percent showing the same voracious appetite of 25 or more books.
The charity behind the UK’s World Book Day – which is celebrated there in March instead of the more widely observed day organised by UNESCO every 23 April – says just one in three children report reading for fun, a serious concern for an activity they claim is “the single biggest indicator” of whether or not a child will be a happy, successful adult.
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Physical books remain the most popular format (82 percent), followed by digital or e-books (40 percent) and audiobooks (30 percent), although preferences among those who consumed more than one format was more evenly split between physical books (41 percent) and their digital counterparts (38 percent).
Interestingly, the greatest preference for digital or e-books was among oldest respondents (46 percent) but that embrace of technology did not extend to audio, with only 17 percent reporting listening to any audiobooks and a paltry 8 percent saying it was their favoured format. Most respondents (53 percent) said they did not consider listening to an audiobook to be equivalent to reading the same book while nearly a fifth (18 percent) said they didn’t know if it was the same or not.
Women are more likely to read (66 percent) than men (53 percent), but politics appears to be the strongest indicator of readership.
Some 70 percent of Labour voters reported having read or listened to at least one book in the past year, along with 72 percent of those who voted to remain in the European Union in 2016. Conversely, voting for the right-wing populist Reform UK party was the stronger predictor of not reading at all (49 percent).
