Prospects for Adult Literacy in a Period of Economic Austerity.

The article evaluates the circumstances for expansion of adult education world-wide. The author draws upon a broad categorization of how industrialized, developing and socialist states expanded access to literacy laid out in earlier work. In the article, alternative views concerning the attempt to regain momentum for the promotion of universal literacy, have also been offered. Regarding the research, that author has evaluated illiteracy and poverty in Canada which seems extremely useful in understanding other national contexts. The world economic crisis that has mainly influenced the adult education provides a macro-level perspective has been evaluated by the author. Consecutively, these analyses are applied to a country context to illustrate their relevance to understand anticipation for expanding basic skill acquisition throughout a nation's population.