THE DECLINE OF READING - LEISURE READING TRENDS IN THE NETHERLANDS (1955-1995)

Recent international research describes a diminishing interest in leis ure reading in almost all the Western countries. In this article, we h ave investigated leisure reading trends of the Dutch population from 1 955 to 1995, using data from seven national representative time budget surveys. Our results show that the time spent reading diminished by a bout half. The strongest decline, especially for books, was found duri ng the initial phase of television (1955-1975). More specifically, the long-term decline in reading can be attributed to a reduced percentag e of the population that reads on a regular basis. With regard to diff erences between social categories, we observed a steeper decline for m en than for women. As a consequence, in 1995 women on average read mor e than men. We found that reading is declining through cohort replacem ent. Among the post-war generations, each new five-year cohort spent a lower percentage of its leisure time reading than the one before. Fou r possible explanations for this downward trend in reading were examin ed. The combination of paid employment and domestic work among the pos t-war generations and the increasing diversity in leisure activities w ere able to explain part of the observed decline. The expanding supply of reading matter seemed to have harmed the appreciation of printed m edia to a certain degree. Competition from television turned out to be the most evident cause of the decline in reading. In this respect, pe ople socialized in a culture of reading and printed matter (born befor e 1950) have least replaced reading by watching television. Among thes e older generations, the better educated have held on longest to leisu re reading. These observed differences in substitution imply that the remaining group of readers now largely consists of better educated peo ple from the pre-war cohorts.