according to the 2003 National Adult Literacy Survey, noting that a "link between academic failure and delinquency, violence and crime is welded to reading failure." 85% of US juvenile inmates are functionally illiterate 43% of adults at the lowest level of literacy lived below the poverty line, as opposed to 4% of those with the highest levels of literacy. The National Center for Education Statistics provides more detail. Literacy is broken down into three parameters: prose, document, and quantitative literacy. Each parameter has four levels: below basic, basic, intermediate, and proficient. For prose literacy, for example, a below basic level of literacy means that a person can look at a short piece of text to get a small piece of uncomplicated information, while a person who is below basic in quantitative literacy would be able to do simple addition. In the US, 14% of the adult population is at the "below basic" level for prose literacy; 12% are at the "below basic" level for document literacy, and 22% are at that level for quantitative literacy. Only 13% of the population is proficient in each of these three areas—able to compare viewpoints in two editorials; interpret a table about blood pressure, age, and physical activity; or compute and compare the cost per ounce of food items. A Literacy at Work study, published by the Northeast Institute in 2001, found that business losses attributed to basic skill deficiencies run into billions of dollars a year due to low productivity, errors, and accidents attributed to functional illiteracy. The American Council of Life Insurers reported that 75% of the Fortune 500 companies provide some level of remedial training for their workers. , 30 million (14% of adults) were unable to perform simple and everyday literacy activities. UNESCO Definition Illiteracy, as well as functional illiteracy, were defined on the 20th session of UNESCO in 1978 as follows: See also Aliteracy Functional English Health literacy Literacy Literacy in the United States Post-literate society Reading Scientific literacy References External links Knowledge Reading (process) Sociolinguistics Literacy de:Analphabetismus#Definitionen und Differenzierungen