Indicator: 23 - Reading to Children

Why This Is Important

Reading to and engaging children in literacy-related activities promotes language acquisition and correlates with literacy development, enhanced reading comprehension and overall success in school.

Where We Stand

About four-fifths of a sample of Maine parents (77% in 2000 and 80% in 2001) reported that someone in their family read to their child(ren) sometime in the past week. Of these, over a quarter (26% in 2000 and 31% in 2001) read to the child three or more times a week but not daily, and three-fifths (60% in 2000 and 59% in 2001) reported reading to them every day.

Similar national-level data is available in a series of reports entitled Trends in the Well-Being of America’s Children and Youth, published by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The chart below right summarizes the extent to which children aged 3-5 in a national sample of households have participated in various literacy activities at home in recent years.

Data Sources and Context

Maine data for this indicator comes from the Maine Development Foundation 2000 and 2001 Surveys of Maine Citizens. The 2000 Survey was conducted in September 2000 by Market Decisions, Inc.; the 2001 Survey was done between August 20 and September 6, 2001 by Strategic Marketing Services. In both years a randomly selected statewide sample of 601 households was interviewed by telephone. Special effort was made to include an adequate number of parents with children living primarily at home (401 in 2000, and 425 in 2001), so that sub-sample was representative of parents in Maine.

Maine survey data is available on-line at http://mdf.org.

The Survey was not conducted in 2002; the Foundation intends to administer the next Survey in time for results to be included in the Maine Economic Growth Council’s publication of Measures of Growth 2004. National data comes from Trends in the Well- Being of America’s Children and Youth, 2000, which is available on-line at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/00trends/index.htm.