Compared to most countries assessed in 1994, the United States had a greater concentration of adults who scored at the lowest literacy levels across prose, document, and quantitative literacy domains. However, it had one of the higher concentrations of adults who scored at or above level 4 on the prose scale. The proportion of adults who scored at each literacy level was similar across the three scales in Canada and the United States. In Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, the proportion of adults who scored at the highest literacy level (level 4/5) was greater on the quantitative than on the prose scale. The distribution of literacy proficiency across different age groups was fairly uniform in the United States, whereas in several other countries young adults had higher literacy levels than older adults. Within Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and the Netherlands, the younger group (aged 26-35) was almost twice as likely to score at or above level 4 on the prose scale as the older group (aged 46-55). Within particular occupations, the proportion of workers scoring at each literacy level varied across the assessed countries. The proportion of skilled craft workers scoring at level 3 or above was lower in the United States than in other countries, particularly Germany. (A table and three graphs show percentage distribution of the population scoring at each of the five literacy levels, by literacy scale, for Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland--French and German, and the United States.) (YLB)