Eurostat: Less than a third of Romanians read a book in the last year

Romania is at the bottom in the EU regarding the share of people who read books in the past 12 months. Only 29.5% of Romania had read books in the year prior to the latest survey conducted by Eurostat, the EU’s official data body.

In 2022, according to EU statistics on income and living conditions, 52.8% of the EU population aged 16 years or over reported reading books in the past 12 months. The youngest group, aged 16-29, read more (60.1%) compared with those aged 30 to 54 (53.5%), 55 to 64 (52.6%) and 65 years and older (47.2%).

More women in the EU read books (60.5%) than men (44.5%). The same pattern was observed when looking at the number of books read: 28.8% of women and 24.8% of men read fewer than 5 books, 14.3% of women and 9.8% of men read 5-9 books, while 17.4% of women and 9.9% of men read 10 or more books.

Among the EU countries, Luxembourg reported the highest share of people who had read books in the 12 months before the survey (75.2%), followed by Denmark (72.1%) and Estonia (70.7%). In contrast, in Romania, only 29.5% did the same, followed by 33.1% in Cyprus and 35.4% in Italy.

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