Noting that the demands of literacy have increased and that it is in this context that literacy performance must be evaluated, this book summarizes the most important results of the Young Adult Literacy Assessment, and provides thoughtful analysis of their implications from the standpoint of unemployment, economic competitiveness, the problem of poverty, and inequality among subgroups in the population. The first chapter of the book provides an orientation to the problem of literacy, defining literacy and differentiating between schooling and education, while the second chapter traces the history of literacy and its assessment in the United States. The Young Adult Literacy Assessment is described in the third chapter, including sampling methods and text types used, and how the results are categorized, while the fourth chapter discusses the resulting assessment of abilities based on document types and processing demands. The fifth chapter compares the performance of selected subgroups, classified by factors including socioeconomic status and educational level. The final chapter draws some conclusions about ways in which literacy levels can be increased, and a brief epilogue puts the current literacy situation into a less than catastrophic perspective. Several pages of notes and references are appended. (HTH)