Discussion

The success of societies is often gauged by elemental economic indicators, such as unemployment rates, average annual income or gross domestic product. Recently, countries have become increasingly concerned about the academic success of their youth and many have developed national testing programs to monitor the success of their educational systems. These programs usually provide indicators of drop-out rates and academic test scores. However, such indicators are insufficient because they fail to describe the extent of inequalities along social class lines, between ethnic groups and between the sexes. Also, they do not characterize the processes that generate social and economic outcomes, or portray the cultural aspects of social life associated with health and well-being (Land 1983; Murnane and Pauly 1988; Willms and Kerckhoff 1995). The findings of this study suggest that the success of a society, as gauged by these types of indicators, depends on the extent to which it is successful in reducing inequalities. The findings also intimate that there are social, economic and historical factors associated with the culture of a society that shape and constrain people’s behaviour.

Most of the attempts to account for variations in literacy skills have emphasized individual-level factors, such as family background, level of schooling and engagement in literacy activities at home and at work. The research conducted on the IALS by Statistics Canada and OECD provides convincing evidence of the importance of engagement in literacy activities at home and at work (OECD and Statistics Canada 1995; HRDC, OECD and Statistics Canada 1997). These findings have provoked local governments to strengthen the call for increases in workplace training and community literacy programs (for example, Willms 1997). The findings reported in this study also emphasize the importance of individual behaviours, but they also show that individual-level factors do not account for all of the variation in literacy skills among countries, or among jurisdictions within countries. Some of this variation is attributable to inequalities among social class groups, and between minority and non-minority groups.

Therefore, the findings emphasize the need for a better understanding of the structural and contextual features of societies and local communities that lead to greater equality, and for policies and interventions that will redress inequalities. One of the most important structural features of a society that affects inequalities is access to quality day-care and schools. Differential access is a plausible explanation for the variation in literacy skills observed in this study. Research on the quality of day-care programs has stressed the importance of three factors: the staff-to-child ratio, the training of care providers, and the quality of material resources. However, despite the importance of the formative years in developing literacy skills, there have not been any national studies of day-cares, in the United States or Canada that are comparable to the (Canadian) National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth or the (U.S.) National Educational Longitudinal Survey. Thus, we know relatively little about the quality of day-care programs, the effects of day-care on children’s early literacy development, or the distribution of different forms of care across social class and ethnic groups, or across jurisdictions within each country.