Brazil reaches historic milestone with illiteracy rate falling by 4.9%

The IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) released, this Friday (19), the Education data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) Continuous 2025.

The data indicates that the illiteracy rate fell to 4.9% in 2025 last year, which represents 8.4 million illiterates. This is the first time that the indicator has been below 5% since the beginning of the historical series, which began in 2016.

In the 2024 PNAD, the index was 5.3%. For comparison, this rate in 2016 was 6.7%.

The index shows that 58% of the country's illiterates are concentrated in the population aged 60 or over. Among this age group, the illiteracy rate:

- among women it is 13.7%;
- among men it is 14.1%;
- among black or brown people it is 20.6%, almost three times higher than that of white people (7.3%) in this age group.

As in previous surveys, the Northeast continues to concentrate the worst illiteracy indicators in the country. The region has 4.8 million people (10.6%) who did not know how to read and write a simple note.

IBGE points to growth in children's school attendance

Source: CNN