the workers. literacy the ability to read and write is one of the most important life skills needed to thrive in today's modern world according to you nasco the united nations education scientific and cultural organization people with poor literacy skills are twice as likely to be unemployed they make thirty to forty percent less than there are literate coworkers and across the world sixty sixty to eighty percent of those in prison have below average literacy skills as of twenty eight hundred nearly seven hundred fifty million people across the globe still don't have the ability to read and write on the flipside for the first time in human history literacy is no longer in the confines of the rich and powerful but accessible to the masses from e-books to the good old fashioned library card never before have books and the skills to read them but easier to get once a amazon according to the organization for economic cooperation and development it was found that today a mere seventeen percent of the world's population is a literate while back in eight hundred twenty only twelve percent of the population were literate as they could read and write one of the most compelling and successful ways people globally