Health-related decisions make use of numeracy skills, for example counting medication dosages, extracting health-related information from food packaging or understanding statistical data. Even though the concept of health literacy is often used to explain health disparities (Freedman et al., in American Journal of Preventive Medicine 36:446-451,…

We examine complex pathways that link health information seeking behavior with education and health literacy (decomposed into general literacy and numeracy), and how these pathways differ by perceived health status (need) among a nationally representative sample of Americans age 50 and older (n = 2,750). Data come from the Program for…

This paper uses data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) to analyze the relationship between self-reported health and (a) literacy, numeracy, and technological problem-solving skills, and (b) post-initial learning for U.S. respondents, and to determine whether those relationships vary by race/ethnicity…