How much do people read in different countries | Pearl Press

One  useful approach is this European Reading League table we derived from European Commission statistical data.

Comparison table (daily minutes per person)

Sadly it’s no time at all compared to TikTok, Netflix or YouTube.

Remember this is statistics, it’s not like people read their favourite book for six minutes a day, it’s more like one in 10 may read for an hour, giving a six-minute number to the statisticians.

Important: The Australian number is tricky as ABS data is for ALL reading and includes newspapers and magazines. Sensibly removing newspapers, magazines and bus tickets likely will have Aussies at a few minutes per person per day with the Europeans.

Where this data comes from  

Eurostat values come directly from the “Time spent reading books (hh:mm)” chart for ages 20–74, and are per-person daily averages (including non-readers).

Australia’s ~19 minutes/day is calculated from ABS 2020–21: 22% were reading on survey day for an average 1 hour 26 minutes (86 minutes). Per-capita daily time ≈ 0.22 × 86 = 18.92 minutes.

• Eurostat news release for World Book Day (explains the range and links to the source dataset).
• The Eurostat chart showing time spent reading books by country (the values above come directly from it).
• Eurostat “How do women and men use their time” explainer (sets out the HETUS wave coverage, countries included, and defines “time spent” as the mean for all individuals).
• Eurostat HETUS overview page (background on the survey programme).