St. Louis ranked 9th highest in "America's Most Literate Cities"

Read it and weep, Kansas City, if everything, including this, is a competition. St. Louis beat us out in the "most literate city" ranking, this past year:

America's Most (and Least) Literate Cities - 24/7 Wall St

For the third year in a row, Washington, D.C., was rated the most literate city in the United States, with Seattle and Minneapolis close behind. That is according to a study conducted by Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) of the literacy of the nation’s largest cities.

The study ranked the cities based on six dimensions of literacy, including size of library systems, presence of bookstores, educational attainment, digital readership, circulation of newspapers and other publications. The most literate cities in the country were often, but not always, in tech-heavy regions with highly educated populations. Based on the university’s report, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the most and least literate cities in the country.


What they found about our state neighbor:

9. St. Louis, Mo.

> Weekday newspaper circulation per 100: 56.21 (10th highest)
> Pct. adults with college degree: 28.2% (34th lowest)
> Retail bookstores per 10,000: 2.92 (13th most)
> Median income: $32,570 (7th lowest)

St. Louis ranked third in terms of library resources, which takes into account the number of libraries and the number of books carried by them. The city also ranked second for publishing, with a high circulation of magazines and journals. The one area where St. Louis scored relatively poorly was in educational attainment, ranking 45th out of the 76 cities. Nearly 84% of adults aged 25 and over had a high-school diploma as of 2011, while just over 28% had at least a bachelor’s degree — both below the national rate.

Now, that said, we didn't do too badly as Kansas City did come in 13th, overall, as "most literate and we did beat out Lincoln, Nebraska this time, too.

I think we should take the ranking of Minneapolis as a challenge to improve where we are on this list, personally.

I also noted one thing from of the list of "least literate" cities and that is that both states of Texas and California seemed to have the most cities on that list, of all the states. I thought that interesting. Texas didn't surprise me, frankly, but California did.

Read more:  http://homes.yahoo.com/news/america-s-most-and-least-literate-cities-224612878.html

Full report here: http://www.ccsu.edu/page.cfm?p=15608