I did a project with the migrant farm workers in California. They could all read and write- a little, and the worker himself could speak some english. Now it is quite possible that their family at home, whom I didnt interview, could do neither. However, most of the men had come over alone and were sending the $ back home. They lived very frugally here, often in cheap motels by the week or month, four of them sharing a small room. They were very hard workers.
One of my friends moms was born in Mexico and came over when she was little, she could read Spanish and speak English perfectly but she literally could not read anything. She also didn’t have a drivers license nor business license as you needed to be able to read to get either document but that didn’t stop her from driving a taco truck around town.
I don’t know if this is true, and I have been Googling, and can’t find the answer, but someone who was pretty high up in the ranks of the Nat’l Federation of the Blind told me that the US was classifying as illiterate people who became blind as adults and could no longer read text, and instead relied on recording and people to read to them.
This was around 2000, when voice-text programs were less common.
Anyway, the NFB was not happy about this for obvious reasons, since nearly all of those people could read perfectly well before they lost their sight, and a few could even still touch-type.
I realize that this would not be enough people to account for a 14% illiteracy, vs. 2% in other countries, but if would suggest that the US does use fairly strict standards, if it is true.
Another factor is that English orthography is far from phonetic. Many other languages have very few words that need to be memorized, and many fewer rules of orthography, such as “I before E, except after C, or when sounding like ‘A’ as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh.’” Think about how many such rules English has, and how often an English speaker needs to know the origin of a word to spell it correctly. You must know “ballet” and “chalet” are French loan-words, to understand why they are spelled as they are.
The complexity of English orthography, and the difficulty of sounding out English words causes many people to score low enough on exams to be considered “functionally illiterate,” even though they may actually be able to function in their own sphere OK. They may be able to read material dealing with their work, because they have memorized relevant words, and they know lots of little function words, such as prepositions and articles, that they do all right at work, but they cannot read outside of the things they need to read in a specific context. They can read texts on their phones, because they are brief, predictable, and full of common words.
In other words, what is called “functionally illiterate” is actually a higher standard that what people can genuinely get by with in the real world.
I’m sure of this, because I’ve seen it. When I worked with disabled people, I worked with lots of developmentally disabled people who would score “functionally illiterate” on exams, but nonetheless, did have useful reading skills, and additionally, when they were placed in job situations, could be tutored effectively in learning words that would be necessary for them to know for their job.
So, if the 14% includes people who score as “functionally illiterate” on exams, it includes a lot of people who may not be able to read for pleasure, but nonetheless, can use written language effectively to achieve employment goals, and I personally would not give them this label, but I’m not in charge.
Yeah, and it’s not particularly high in % of people with low literacy proficiency either. 
As I mentioned, the language factor could also affect various Western countries with relatively large immigrant populations. Also as I mentioned it could affect some countries with non-immigration related language heterogeneity (it’s not clear how that’s corrected for in each case, or whether it’s corrected for the same way in various cases). However a least a couple of posts IIRC mentioned the rankings of Japan and/or S.Korea and they have quite small immigrant populations (some of whom are ethnic Japanese or Korean people from other countries) and little (indigenous people in Japan) or no (Korea) ‘traditional’ language heterogeneity unlike many European countries. Thinking particularly of marginal languages rather than situation in Belgium, Switzerland etc where equal treatment of major languages is bedrock of education. For example I wonder if the literacy proficiency in Flemish or French is as high in German speaking villages on the eastern border of Belgium, not thinking it’s low, but maybe not quite as high, unless they measure it in German there…but you’d have to research that for every country.
Yes, I’ve never been around harder workers.
I was referencing the families that my (Catholic) church helped with immigration status, health care, food etc. The children all spoke and read English, but the older generations sometimes could not even read Spanish. For some, Spanish was their second language, their first being an indigenous language.
In the 80s at The University of Pittsburgh, there was a basketball star who happened to be in my English Composition class. He turned in papers when required, but each was in a different handwriting. He was functionally illiterate, yet graduated with a C average.
In the 90s I knew a woman who did all the paperwork for her husband’s business, because he was functionally illiterate. He also was abusive. Over a few years time she restructured the ownership of the business which was easy since he just signed whatever she asked him to sign. Eventually she moved out and filed for divorce. She did well.
There’s a meme going around with some white bread family eatings their dinner and saying “Thank you Jesus for this food today in this time of troubles…”
and cut to a Migrant farm worker picking lettuce saying “You’re welcome!”
Not all of the US is a “modern developed” country. Lots of folks fall through the cracks in the education system.
We have rural and inner city schools that are little more than jail lite facilities that keep kids off the street until they’re old enough for grown up jail.
I’m not as educated as most folks here. I know lots of people who are illiterate. Most of them are older. They usually have some form of learning disability, but not all of them.
I have a friend who can read a newspaper okay, but you wouldn’t understand a word he wrote down. I would say he is an intelligent person. He is a black man of retirement age. He grew up in Detroit. I imagine his level of literacy would have been common among his peers in school. They probably stamped your diploma if you were fit to crank out car parts in those times in Detroit.
I saw a variation of this several years ago.
A very bad definition of what constitutes “illiteracy”