Resumen de What do Literacy Rates in the 19th Century Really Signify?: New Light on an old Problem from Unique Swedish Data
The possibilities to measure literacy during the 19th century are limited. Signatures in marriage registers are sometimes regarded as an international standard, but they are not available for all countries. In international studies, other indicators are used with the implicit assumption that they are comparable to signature rates. That could be extremely misleading. The article presents five different estimates of literacy from various sources in southern Sweden for the period 1820-1860, that vary from 8-10% up to 85-90%. The conclusion is that different sources capture different literacies; a fact which should be much more taken notice of in international comparisons. The paper ends with a plea for closer collaboration between literacy researchers in different countries
