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Strong literacy skills are critical to the economic success of Canada and of individual Canadians, and the need for these skills is growing. Further economic growth relies on the availability of those skills. By various measures, Canada maintains a successful literacy record, but despite these successes there are notable gaps in Canada's literacy achievements. There are age gaps, education gaps and regional gaps. This report focuses on a specific regionally based gap: the literacy gap between rural Canadians and their urban counterparts. The available evidence uncovered in this report indicates that there is a significant literacy gap between rural and urban Canadians. Evidence from adult literacy assessments suggests that these rural/urban differences persist into adulthood. Inspections of the data point to two conclusions regarding this rural/urban literacy gap: (1) Among adults, the gap is entirely mediated by educational attainment; educational attainment and literacy skill are tightly linked. When the effect of education attainment is controlled, the rural/urban literacy gap among adults disappears. This finding highlights the importance of attending to educational attainment in addressing the rural/urban literacy gap. (2) Among young Canadians, the gap shows substantial regional variation. Closer inspection of the data indicates that the rural/urban literacy gap is not the same across Canada. For example, there are particularly large rural/urban literacy gaps among adults in Atlantic Canada, a much smaller gap in Ontario, and a small rural advantage in Western Canada. These gaps between regions highlight an important point: the rural/urban gap is not universal. Rurality itself does not necessarily put students at risk for lower literacy achievement, rather rurality is associated and interacts with other literacy risk factors.

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