Trends in Leisure Reading, Forty Years of Research on Reading in the Netherlands

Recent international research describes a diminishing interest in leisure reading for almost all western countries. In this article, we have investigated trends in leisure reading of the Dutch population between 1955 and 1995, using data from seven national representative time budget surveys. First, our results show that the time spent on reading has diminished by about half. The strongest decline, especially for books, was found during the initial phase of television (1955–1975). More specifically, the long-term decline in reading can be attributed to a shrinking portion of the population that reads on a regular basis. Second, with regard to differences between social categories, we observed a steeper decline for men than for women. In 1995, as a consequence, women on average read more than men. Also, we found that reading is in retreat through cohort replacement. Among the post-war generations, each newly entering five-year cohort spent a lower percentage of leisure time on reading than its immediate predecessor. Third, four possible explanations for the observed downward trend in reading were examined. The combination of paid work and domestic tasks among the post-war generations, and the increasing diversity in leisure activities, explained part of the observed decline. Also, the expansion of the supply of reading material seemed to have harmed appreciation of printed media to a certain degree. Competition from television turned out to be the most evident cause of the decline in reading. In this respect, individuals socialized in a culture of reading and printed matter (born before 1950), exhibited the lowest degree of reading replacement with television. Among these older generations, the higher educated have held on longest to leisure reading. These observed differences in substitution imply that the remaining group of readers, currently consists primarily of higher educated persons from the pre-war cohorts.