The established patterns of literacy proficiency continue to prevail, with higher performance among the young and the educated. But, there are variations in literacy performance among the provinces and territories, with residents of Western provinces generally scoring higher than the Canadian average in the four domains. This pattern tends to hold, even when variation in age and education is held constant. Men tend to have higher proficiency than women in numeracy and this is true in most jurisdictions.
Age, gender and education do not operate independently of each other. For example, the relationship between age and proficiency is moderated by educational attainment.
There are several demographic groups with low levels of literacy and numeracy. The majority of seniors have relatively low literacy, which may impact their quality of life by increasing their dependency, and posing health and safety risks. More than one-third of youth also have low literacy skills. This could well impact adversely on participation in postsecondary education and success in the labour market. While a strong relationship exists between education levels and literacy and numeracy performance, one-fifth of university graduates are below the desired threshold for coping with the increasing skill demands of a knowledge society. Furthermore, the average prose literacy proficiency of university graduates has decreased between 1994 and 2003.
Given that an unequal distribution of competencies could well translate into economic and social inequalities, it is of importance to Canadian society to ask what factors are underlying the varying performance of particular demographic groups.