Zambia Demographic and Health Survey 2001-2002 - Measure DHS

3.3 LITERACYThe ability to read is an important personal asset allowing women and men increased opportunitiesin life. Knowing the distribution of the literate population can help programme planners, especiallyfor health and family planning programmes, know how to best reach women and men with their messages.In the 2001-2002 ZDHS, literacy was established by a respondent’s ability to read all or part of asimple sentence in any of the seven major language groups of Zambia. 2 The test on literacy was only appliedto respondents who had less than secondary education.Table 3.3 shows that literacy levels are higher for men than women throughout all age groups.Over one-third (38 percent) of women and close to a fifth (18 percent) of men are illiterate. As expected,urban respondents have higher literacy levels (79 percent for women and 91 percent for men) than thosein rural areas (48 percent for women and 76 percent for men).Figure 3.1 indicates the extent to which those who are close to school age (15-24) are literate. Itshows that literacy levels for youth are higher for males than for females. While almost six in ten womenin both age groups are literate, the literacy level for men is higher for both age groups (71 percent for menage 15-19 and 83 percent for men age 20-24).2The major language groups were Bemba, Kaonde, Lozi, Lunda, Luvale, Nyanja, and Tonga.Characteristics of Respondents │ 29