Eurostat: Less than a third of Romanians read a book in the last year
<p>Romania is at the bottom in the EU regarding the share of people who read books in the past 12 months. Only 29.5% of Romania had read books in the year prior to the latest survey conducted by <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240809-2">Eurostat, the EU’s official data body</a>.</p>
<p>In 2022, according to EU statistics on income and living conditions, 52.8% of the EU population aged 16 years or over reported reading books in the past 12 months. The youngest group, aged 16-29, read more (60.1%) compared with those aged 30 to 54 (53.5%), 55 to 64 (52.6%) and 65 years and older (47.2%). </p>
<p>More women in the EU read books (60.5%) than men (44.5%). The same pattern was observed when looking at the number of books read: 28.8% of women and 24.8% of men read fewer than 5 books, 14.3% of women and 9.8% of men read 5-9 books, while 17.4% of women and 9.9% of men read 10 or more books. </p>
<p>Among the EU countries, Luxembourg reported the highest share of people who had read books in the 12 months before the survey (75.2%), followed by Denmark (72.1%) and Estonia (70.7%). In contrast, in Romania, only 29.5% did the same, followed by 33.1% in Cyprus and 35.4% in Italy.</p>
<p><em><a href="mailto:radu@romania-insider.com">radu@romania-insider.com</a></em></p>
<p><em>(Photo source: Lapandr | <a href="https://www.dreamstime.com/">Dreamstime.com</a>)</em></p>