Literacy Rate: Belarus

Analysis# Belarus Literacy Rate Belarus maintains an exceptional literacy rate of 99.87% as of 2019, matching its all-time peak. The country has steadily climbed from 97.88% in 1989, a total gain of 2.0 percentage points over three decades. This improvement places Belarus among the world's highest-literate nations, with virtually universal reading and writing proficiency across its population. The most significant progress occurred between 1989 and 1999, when the literacy rate jumped 1.71 percentage points to 99.59%. Since then, gains have plateaued at near-maximal levels, rising only 0.28 percentage points across the subsequent two decades. With the rate already approaching saturation, further increases will likely remain marginal, constrained by the diminishing pool of non-literate adults.