It's well documented that America struggles with low literacy rates among its population. Here are some key literacy statistics:

• Almost 10% of adults in the U.S. have below-fourth grade literacy skills.
• Of this group of adults, 72% of their children will also grow up to have below-fourth grade literacy skills.
• Minority students are disproportionately affected: among high school seniors, just 17% of black students and 25% of Latino students scored 'proficient' on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress's 12th-grade reading assessment, compared to 46% of white students.

The most immediate impact of low literacy rates in children is consequent worse performance in schools. Those who cannot read and write at their appropriate grade level risk falling behind their peers and entering a zero-sum game where each passing year makes it less and less likely that they will recover to their expected levels of literacy.

It can also be a source of shame for many students, as they won't want to admit to peers or teachers that their skills are so low. Consequently, these students may refuse to seek help because they want to avoid the societal stigma associated with low literacy.

However, the life impacts of low literacy stretch well beyond the classroom. Here are some other major long-term impacts that low literacy can have on people's lives:

• Literacy as a healthcare issue: It's estimated that over $230 billion of healthcare costs can be attributed to many Americans' inability to understand health information, usually due to issues with reading (prescriptions and diagnoses, for example).
• 75% of inmates in state prisons have low literacy skills. Additionally, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world, at about 1% of all adults.
• Lack of literacy drastically reduces access to a wide swath of high-skill jobs, leading to higher unemployment and poverty rates among the low-literate.
• A 2013 report from the National Center for Education Statistics showed that the United States' literacy rates are declining, and that there is large potential for this to negatively impact our economy in the future.

Some of the individual variation in literacy can be attributed to things largely outside of our control, such as innate differences in language processing ability. However, this alone cannot explain the systemic literacy differences between demographic groups: there's no one racial group that has a consistent biological advantage when it comes to literacy.

So there must be other impacts. Here are a few:

• Educational differences: those who are more socioeconomically well-off are more likely to attend well-funded schools that have the proper resources and personnel to teach children how to be proficient in literary skills. Many of those who are less socioeconomically-less-fortunate are forced to send their children to underfunded and understaffed schools, putting those children at a distinct disadvantages when it comes to learning these critical skills.
• The 'cycle of poverty': as mentioned in the 'Identifying the Problem' section, a very high percentage of children whose parents have low literacy (which is itself very strongly correlated with high poverty rates) also have low literacy themselves. This creates a vicious cycle that traps each ensuing generation in educational debt.
• Racism: again, as mentioned previously, there are stark contrasts in the literacy rates between whites and non-whites. A certain amount of this difference is likely attributable to the long legacy of racist educational policies in America, such as segregated schools and communities. Much of this segregation still exists today in a de facto state (even if it's no longer legally mandated), and it undoubtedly influences this literacy discrepancy.
• Reading disabilities: Many children have reading disabilities such as dyslexia that impede their ability to develop key literacy skills. To read more about this, you can visit the 'Interventions for Children with Reading Disabilities' page here.