In 2021, the rate of adult literacy as share of the country's population 15 years and above in Costa Rica amounted to 98.04 percent. Between 1984 and 2021, the rate of adult literacy rose by 5.04 percentage points.

The youth literacy rate (people aged 15-24) in Costa Rica stood at 99.53 percent in 2021. Between 1984 and 2021, the youth literacy rate rose by 2.53 percentage points, though the increase followed an uneven trajectory rather than a consistent upward trend.

Costa Rica CR: Literacy Rate: Adult Male: % of Males Aged 15 and Above data was reported at 97.990 % in 2021. This records an increase from the previous number of 97.000 % for 2011. Costa Rica CR: Literacy Rate: Adult Male: % of Males Aged 15 and Above data is updated yearly, averaging 96.000 % from Dec 1984 (Median) to 2021, with 4 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 97.990 % in 2021 and a record low of 93.000 % in 1984. Costa Rica CR: Literacy Rate: Adult Male: % of Males Aged 15 and Above data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Costa Rica – Table CR.World Bank.WDI: Social: Education Statistics. Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.;UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). UIS.Stat Bulk Data Download Service. Accessed April 5, 2025. https://apiportal.uis.unesco.org/bdds.;Weighted average;

Historical dataset showing Costa Rica literacy rate by year from 1984 to 2021.

Actual value and historical data chart for Costa Rica Literacy Rate Adult Total Percent Of People Ages 15 And Above

Costa Rica CR: Literacy Rate: Youth Male: % of Males Aged 15-24 data was reported at 99.460 % in 2021. This records an increase from the previous number of 74.780 % for 2018. Costa Rica CR: Literacy Rate: Youth Male: % of Males Aged 15-24 data is updated yearly, averaging 97.000 % from Dec 1984 (Median) to 2021, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 99.460 % in 2021 and a record low of 74.780 % in 2018. Costa Rica CR: Literacy Rate: Youth Male: % of Males Aged 15-24 data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Costa Rica – Table CR.World Bank.WDI: Social: Education Statistics. Youth literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15-24 who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.;UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). UIS.Stat Bulk Data Download Service. Accessed April 5, 2025. https://apiportal.uis.unesco.org/bdds.;Weighted average;

In 2011, the literacy rate of people ages 15 years and over in Costa Rica was estimated at about 97 percent. Between 1984 and 2011, the rate rose by approximately four percentage points.

Actual value and historical data chart for Costa Rica Literacy Rate Youth Male Percent Of Males Ages 15 24

The average for 2021 based on 3 countries was 94.81 percent. The highest value was in Costa Rica: 98.04 percent and the lowest value was in Puerto Rico: 92.4 percent. The indicator is available from 1970 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Actual value and historical data chart for Costa Rica Elderly Literacy Rate Population 65 Years Male Percent

Actual value and historical data chart for Costa Rica Literacy Rate Youth Female Percent Of Females Ages 15 24

Literacy rate, adult male (% of males ages 15 and above) in Costa Rica was reported at 97.99 % in 2021, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Costa Rica - Literacy rate, adult male (% of males ages 15 and above) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on October of 2025.

The average for 2021 based on 12 countries was 98.43 percent. The highest value was in Costa Rica: 99.61 percent and the lowest value was in Puerto Rico: 92.4 percent. The indicator is available from 1970 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Language and cognitive assessment of preschool children from Costa Rica

Costa Rica: Male literacy rate, ages 15-24: Pour cet indicateur, UNESCO fournit des données pour la Costa Rica de 1984 à 2021. La valeur moyenne pour Costa Rica pendant cette période était de 93.45 pour cent avec un minimum de 74.78 pour cent en 2018 et un maximum de 99.46 pour cent en 2021.

In 2025, Costa Rica was the Latin American country with the highest gender gap index, with 0.786 points. Another Central American country, Belize, had the worst score in the region with 0.7 points. This means that, on average, women in this country have 30 percent less opportunities than men in education, health, the economy, and politics.

Gender Inequality in Latin America
Based on a 2023 survey conducted among the populace in each nation, Mexico has been perceived as having the least gender-based wage equality, receiving a score of 0.5 out of 1, which is the lowest. In contrast, Barbados is regarded as the most gender-equal among the LATAM countries. Furthermore, the labor market exhibits a male bias, as women have consistently experienced higher unemployment rates over the years, with a rate of 11.3 percent as of 2021. Additionally, it is more common across the countries to observe a greater proportion of females experiencing higher poverty rates, with Mexican and Colombian women being the primary two groups representing this circumstance.

Literacy gender gap
As education progresses in both the educational and labor sectors, the goal is to ensure that basic literacy is accessible to everyone. However, research data reveals that the gender parity index for adult and youth literacy in Latin America remains at around 1 percent. This means that one woman out of 100 is less likely to possess literacy skills compared to men. Furthermore, this rate shows a significant gender gap, with 93.71 percent of females in this region accounting for this skill. Consequently, in the labor field, there are implications for skilled workers due to this literacy gap, resulting in higher rates of unemployment, a lack of training, and a non-educational population. This issue affects approximately 28.4 percent of women in Latin America.

La moyenne pour 2021 était de 97.7 pour cent. La valeur la plus élevée était au Costa Rica: 99.61 pour cent et la valeur la plus basse était au Porto Rico: 92.4 pour cent. Vous trouverez ci-dessous un graphique pour tous les pays où les données sont disponibles.

Abstract

PISA assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies, with a focus on reading, mathematics and science. PISA focuses on young people’s ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in the goals and objectives of curricula themselves, which are increasingly concerned with what students can do with what they learn at school and not merely with whether they have mastered specific curricular content. PISA also aims to examine students' learning strategies, their competencies in areas such as problem solving that involves multiple disciplines and their interests in different topics. This kind of broader assessment started in PISA 2000, which asked students about their motivation and other aspects of their attitudes towards learning, their familiarity with computers and, under the heading "self-regulated learning", about their strategies for managing and monitoring their own education. The assessment of students' motivations and attitudes continued in PISA 2006, with special attention given to students' attitudes towards and interest in science. Returning to reading as the major subject of assessment, PISA 2009 focused on students' engagement in reading activities and their understanding about their own reading and learning strategies.

PISA’s unique features include: - Policy orientation, which connects data on student learning outcomes with data on students’ characteristics and on key factors shaping their learning in and out of school in order to draw attention to differences in performance patterns and to identify the characteristics of students, schools and education systems that have high performance standards. - Innovative concept of “literacy”, which refers to the capacity of students to apply knowledge and skills in key subject areas and to analyse, reason and communicate effectively as they pose, interpret and solve problems in a variety of situations. - Relevance to lifelong learning, which does not limit PISA to assessing students’ competencies in school subjects, but also asks them to report on their own motivation to learn, their beliefs about themselves and their learning strategies. - Regularity, which enables countries to monitor their progress in meeting key learning objectives. - Breadth of geographical coverage and collaborative nature, which, in PISA 2009, encompasses the 34 OECD member countries and 41 partner countries and economies.

Geographic coverage

75 countries and economies, including all 34 OECD countries and 41 partner countries and economies: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Himachal Pradesh-India, Hong Kong-China, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao-China, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Miranda-Venezuela, Montenegro, Netherlands, Netherlands-Antilles, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Shanghai-China, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tamil Nadu-India, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam.

Analysis unit

• Individual (student, parent)
• School

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The specific sample design and size for each country aimed to maximise sampling efficiency for student-level estimates. In OECD countries, sample sizes ranged from 4,410 students in Iceland to 38,250 students in Mexico. Countries with large samples have often implemented PISA both at national and regional/state levels (e.g. Australia, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom). The selection of samples was monitored internationally and adhered to rigorous standards for the participation rate, both among schools selected by the international contractor and among students within these schools, to ensure that the PISA results reflect the skills of the 15-year-old students in participating countries. Countries were also required to administer the test to students in identical ways to ensure that students receive the same information prior to and during the assessment.

When a school has been selected to participate in PISA, a school co-ordinator is appointed. The school coordinator compiles a list of all 15-year-olds in the school and sends this list to the PISA National Centre in the country, which randomly selects 35 students to participate. The school co-ordinator then contacts the students who have been selected for the sample and obtains the necessary permissions from parents. The testing session is usually conducted by a test administrator who is trained and employed by the National Centre. The test administrator contacts the school co-ordinator to schedule administration of the assessment. The school coordinator ensures that the students attend the testing sessions. This can sometimes be difficult because students may come from different grades and different classes. The test administrator's primary tasks are to ensure that each test booklet is distributed to the correct student and to introduce the tests to the students. After the test is over, the test administrator collects the test booklets and sends them to the National Centre for coding.

In PISA 2009, 13 different test booklets were used in each country. Each booklet had a different subset of PISA questions, so that students answered overlapping groups of questions, in order to produce a wide range of test items while limiting the test time for each student. With 13 different booklets, in each group of 35 students, no more than 3 students were given the same booklet. Booklets were allocated to individual students according to a random selection process. The test administrator's introduction came from a prescribed text so that all students in different schools and countries received exactly the same instructions. Before starting the test, the students were asked to do a practice question from their booklets. The testing session was divided into two parts: the two-hour-long test to assess their knowledge and skills, and the questionnaire session to collect data on their personal background, their learning habits, their attitudes towards reading, and their engagement and motivation. The length of the questionnaire session varied across countries, depending on the options chosen for inclusion, but generally was about 30 minutes. Students were usually given a short break half-way through the test and again before they did the questionnaire.

For more information on PISA's technical background, refer to the documents "PISA 2009 Results: Overcoming Social Background - Volume II", Annex A and "PISA 2009 Technical Report" that are provided as external resources.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

• Questionnaire on Educational Career: Different aspects of experience at school
• ICT Familiarity Component for the Student Questionnaire: Availability of ICT, General computer use, Use of ICT at home, Use of ICT at school, Attitude toward computers
• Parent Questionnaire: Basic parent characteristics, Child's past reading engagement, Parent's own reading engagement, Home reading resources and support, Parent's background, Parent's perception of and involvement in school, School choice
• Reading for School: The kind of reading typically done for school
• School Questionnaire: The Structure and organization of the school, The student and teacher body, The school's resources, School curriculum and assessment, School climate, School policies and practices, About respondent
• Student Questionnaire: About respondent, Family and home, Reading activities, Learning time, School, Test language lessons, Libraries, Strategies in reading and understanding texts

Response rate

• School Response Rates: A response rate of 85% was required for initially selected schools. If the initial school response rate fell between 65% and 85%, an acceptable school response rate could still be achieved through the use of replacement schools. To compensate for a sampled school that did not participate, where possible, two potential replacement schools were identified. Furthermore, a school with a student participation rate between 25% and 50% was not considered as a participating school for the purposes of calculating and documenting response rates. However, data from such schools were included in the database and contributed to the estimates included in the initial PISA international report. Data from schools with a student participation rate of less than 25% were not included in the database, and such schools were regarded as non-respondents.

• Student Response Rates: An overall response rate of 80% of selected students in participating schools was required. A student who had participated in the original or follow-up cognitive sessions was considered to be a participant. A minimum student response rate of 50% within each school was required for a school to be regarded as participating: the overall student response rate was computed using only students from schools with at least a 50% student response rate. Again, weighted student response rates were used for assessing this standard. Each student was weighted by the reciprocal of his/her sample selection

La moyenne pour 2021 était de 95.22 pour cent. La valeur la plus élevée était au Costa Rica: 98.04 pour cent et la valeur la plus basse était au Porto Rico: 92.4 pour cent. Vous trouverez ci-dessous un graphique pour tous les pays où les données sont disponibles.

La moyenne pour 2021 était de 97.62 pour cent. La valeur la plus élevée était au Costa Rica: 99.53 pour cent et la valeur la plus basse était au Porto Rico: 92.4 pour cent. Vous trouverez ci-dessous un graphique pour tous les pays où les données sont disponibles.