Archive:Culture statistics - frequency and obstacles in participation

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Data extracted in April 2016. Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database. Planned article update: June 2017.

Cultural participation is an essential dimension of the European statistical framework for culture, it is a "raison d'être" for the cultural sectors. It contributes to the personal well-being and to the integration of individuals in society.

Statistics presented in this article relate to the involvement of people in cultural activities. They are based on data currently available in Eurostat from the Adult Education Survey (AES) (module on cultural participation) carried out in 2007 and 2011. In the 2011 AES which was run for the first time under EU legislation, the module on cultural participation was not mandatory and not all EU Member States introduced it in the survey. This article will be updated next year with the results of the EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) ad hoc module 2015 on social and cultural participation which was conducted in all Member States.

This article covers the following cultural activities:

reading habits (books and newspapers);
going to the cinema;
attending live performances (plays, concerts, operas, ballet and dance); and
visiting cultural sites (historical monuments, museums, art galleries or archaeological sites).

Table 1: Percentage of persons who have read at least one book in the last 12 months, by sex, 2007 and 2011
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_bka)

Figure 1: Number of books read in the last 12 months, 2011 (¹)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_bka)

Figure 2: Percentage of persons who have read at least one book in the last 12 months, by age group, 2011 (¹)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_bka)

Figure 3: Percentage of persons who have read at least one book in the last 12 months, by educational attainment, 2011 (¹)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_bke)

Figure 4: Percentage of persons who have read newspapers daily in the last 12 months, by sex, 2011 (¹)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_nws)

Figure 5: Frequency of reading newspapers in the last 12 months, 2011 (¹)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_nws)

Figure 6: Percentage of persons who have read newspapers daily in the last 12 months, by educational attainment, 2011 (¹)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_nwe)

Table 2: Percentage of persons who have participated in cultural activities at least once in the last 12 months, 2007 and 2011
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_caa)

Table 3: Percentage of persons who have participated in cultural activities at least once in the last 12 months, by age group, 2011
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_caa)

Table 4: Percentage of persons who have been to the cinema at least once in the last 12 months, by sex and age group, 2011
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_caa)

Figure 7: Frequency of going to the cinema in the last 12 months, 2011 (¹)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_caa)

Figure 8: Percentage of persons who have been to the cinema at least once in the last 12 months, by educational attainment, 2011 (¹)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_cae)

Table 5: Percentage of persons who have attended a live performance (¹) at least once in the last 12 months, by sex and age group, 2011
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_caa)

Figure 9: Frequency of going to a live performance (¹) in the last 12 months, 2011 (²)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_caa)

Figure 10: Percentage of persons who have attended a live performance (¹) at least once in the last 12 months, by educational attainment, 2011 (²)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_caa)

Table 6: Percentage of persons who have visited a cultural site (¹) at least once in the last 12 months, by sex and age group, 2011
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_cae)

Figure 11: Frequency of visiting cultural sites (¹) in the last 12 months, 2011 (²)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_caa)

Figure 12: Percentage of persons who have visited a cultural site (¹) at least once in the last 12 months, by educational attainment, 2011 (²)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (cult_pcs_caa)

Main statistical findings

Among all breakdown variables used for the analysis of cultural participation — age, sex, educational attainment — the latter is the one for which discrepancies across categories are the most visible. For all the cultural activities covered under this analysis, people with tertiary education participate the most whereas the participation is often very rare for people with low educational attainment.

Reading books

As one of the oldest communication tools, and as transmitter of knowledge and ideas, books continue to play an important role in the education and cultural enrichment of European citizens.

In 2011, among countries with available data, Luxembourg (82 %) and Germany (75 %) had the highest shares of population having read at least one book (as a leisure activity) within the previous 12 months (see Table 1). These percentages were also at least 70 % in Estonia, Finland and Austria.

Romania, Portugal, Bulgaria and Greece recorded the lowest rates: indeed, in 2011 the majority of the population never read a book in the last 12 months.

For the 19 EU countries where data were available for 2007 and 2011, only three showed a (slight) increase in the rate of book readers (Italy the most with + 7 percentage points). In the remaining countries, the share of readers fell from 2007 to 2011; in Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, the fall exceeded 10 percentage points.

In 2011, the countries accounting for the highest percentages of people having read at least one book were also the ones with the highest shares of people having read more than 10 books in a year (see Figure 1). Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal and Romania formed the group of countries with the lowest share of people (less than 10 %) having read more than 10 books.

Looking at the age variable (see Figure 2), there are no important differences across age groups as concerns reading books. In Malta, Portugal, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria, book fans are more numerous among younger people than among older ones. In Luxembourg, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Latvia, they are relatively more numerous among older age groups (even if the difference is not large).

Women read books more than men (see Table 1). In 2011, in all countries, the difference between women and men in the share of people having read at least one book in the last 12 months was higher than 10 percentage points. In six countries, it even exceeded 25 percentage points. If in general, the gap between male and female book readers tended to grow between 2007 and 2011, it was basically due to a bigger reduction in the share of male readers than for their female counterparts.

Educational attainment (the highest educational level successfully completed) is another variable that strongly influences reading patterns (see Figure 3). In all countries, the percentage of people having read at least one book in the last 12 months increased with the level of educational attainment. The discrepancies between countries concerned the degree to which the percentages differed across the three educational attainment levels. In 14 out of 20 Member States, the difference in the share of book readers between people with high and medium educational attainment was greater than between people with medium and low educational attainment. In other words, higher educational attainment had the biggest impact on reading habits. In Romania, this influence was the most significant.

Reading newspapers

Reading newspapers is also considered a form of cultural participation, as the press is a privileged source of information on international and local events. The development of new ICT platforms for news dissemination (online press) was taken into account in the 2011 survey.

In 2011, the most avid newspaper readers were in Finland, Luxembourg and Austria, where more than 75 % of the population read newspapers almost every day (see Figure 4). At the other end of the scale were Greece and Romania, having barely 30 % of daily readers of newspapers.

In 2011, daily newspaper readership showed the opposite trend to book readership when comparing women and men: male newspaper readers generally tended to outnumber their female counterparts (see Figure 4). The exceptions to this were Latvia, Poland and Lithuania. The gender gap was higher than 15 percentage points — in favour of men — in Cyprus, Spain and Portugal.

Educational attainment (see Figure 6) also has an impact on the newspapers’ reading, although it is smaller than that observed for book readers described previously. In some countries — Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Finland — the percentage of newspaper readers among people with medium educational attainment was very similar to that for people with tertiary education.

Cultural activities

The Adult Education Survey also covers other types of cultural activities like going to the cinema, attending live cultural performances and visiting cultural sites.

Participation in live cultural performances concerns only spectating. Live performances (plays, concerts, operas, ballet and dance) refer to any event performed by professionals, amateurs, or even by one’s own children.

Cultural sites include historical monuments, museums, art galleries or archaeological sites.

Among three cultural activities analysed, attendance at live performances accounted for the highest levels in 12 of the 19 Member States for which data were available in 2011 (see Table 2). Going to the cinema was the leading activity in Italy and Poland, while visiting cultural sites was the most popular in the Czech Republic, Germany, Malta, Austria and Slovenia.

When comparing these three types of cultural activity in 2007 and 2011, there was a general tendency towards increased cultural participation. However, this trend was not consistent across all Member States. The Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Finland recorded increases in all three types of activity. Cyprus and Romania, on the other hand, reported decreases in all three activities over the same period.

Going to the cinema, theatre and concerts were the activities for which people showed more and more interest between 2007 and 2011 while visitors to cultural sites became scarcer and scarcer.

Going to the cinema

In 2011, Luxembourg (73 %) and the United Kingdom (65 %) were the two Member States that had the highest share of the people aged 25–64 having been to the cinema at least once in the previous 12 months. In five other Member States — Finland, Austria, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic — did over half of the population go to the cinema at least once in the last 12 months. (Spain and Belgium can also be added to this list if we look at data from the 2007 AES.) In comparison, this rate was only 16 % in Romania and 26 % in Bulgaria (see Table 2).

From 2007 to 2011, an increase in the share of the population who had gone to the cinema was recorded in 12 of the 17 Member States for which data were available. This increase was particularly noticeable in Lithuania and Estonia (around + 11 percentage points). Greece reported the steepest drop, going from 49 % in 2007 to 42 % in 2011.

Participation in all types of cultural activity was generally the highest among the population aged 25–34 (see Table 3). This was definitively the case for cinema in all Member States for which data were available. Looking at the breakdown by sex and age, the younger age group’s predominance on cinema seats is confirmed, regardless of gender (see Table 4).

As concerns gender differences, the percentage of women (aged 25–64) who had gone to the cinema at least once in the last 12 months was in general slightly higher than that for men. In most cases, the difference was quite marginal, except in Finland where 63 % of women went to the cinema at least once compared with 53 % of men. Overall, the gender difference was the lowest in the youngest age group (25–34) and the highest in the 35–44 age group.

Educational attainment level is another variable that matters in the cinema attender’s profile (see Figure 8). In all Member States, the cinema attendance rate for people with tertiary education was over 50 % (except for Romania at 49 %). In all available countries, the higher the educational attainment, the higher the cinema attendance rate. The cinema attendance rates of the population with low educational attainment stood below 43 % in all Member States except Luxembourg (at 63 %).

Attending live performances

In 2011, in 10 Member States, more than half of the adult population reported attending a theatre, concert, opera, ballet or dance performance at least once in the last 12 months: Luxembourg, Slovakia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Austria, Portugal and Cyprus. In contrast, less than one third of the population did this in Romania and Bulgaria (see Table 2).

In the majority of Member States for which data were available, there was a rise in the share of the population who went to a live performance between 2007 and 2011. Slovakia (+ 13 percentage points) and Italy (+ 12 percentage points) accounted for the highest increases. Shares went down in six Member States, with Bulgaria (– 8 percentage points) and Lithuania (– 7 percentage points) recording the steepest drops.

In terms of frequency (see Figure 9), for Luxembourg, Slovakia, Finland, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Portugal, more than 10 % of the population aged 25–64 attended a live performance at least seven times in the previous 12 months. In Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Poland, on the other hand, the shares of the population having attended more than six live performances stood at less than 5 %.

As concerns gender analysis (see Table 5), the rates of women aged 25–64 attending live performances were significantly higher than those of men in almost all EU countries for which data were available in 2011. The exceptions were Portugal and Romania, where men and women were generally equally represented. Latvia and Lithuania accounted for the greatest gender differences (18 percentage points in favour of women), reaching more than 21 percentage points difference in the 35–44 age group.

Regarding attendance at live performances by age, almost all Member States saw cultural participation at its lowest among the oldest age group 55–64.

Once again, the level of education (see Figure 10) was an important factor having an impact on attendance at live performances. As it was the case with cinema, higher levels of educational attainment systematically resulted in higher attendance levels. The share of people with high educational attainment attending live performances varied from 61 % in Germany to 87 % in Slovakia. For the population with low education, the share ranged from 4 % in Romania to 71 % in Luxembourg. Indeed, in Luxembourg, the difference in participation rates of people with high and low educational attainment levels was also the smallest (14 percentage points). In other words, differences across countries are largely due to the attendance rate of people with low education. Countries with big differences of participation according to different educational attainment levels (Romania and Hungary with over 64 percentage points) also displayed high percentages of people not attending live performances at all (see Figure 9).

Visiting cultural sites

Just as for cinema and live performance attendance, Luxembourg (78 %) also ranked top in the share of the population visiting cultural sites in 2011. The Czech Republic and Austria followed with 60 %. For Slovenia, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Slovakia and Latvia, more than 50 % of adults visited a cultural site in the year preceding the survey. Romania and Greece were the two Member States with the least visits to cultural sites, with 18 % and 27 % respectively (see Table 2).

In 8 of the 17 Member States for which data were available in both 2007 and 2011, the share of the population having visited a cultural site slightly decreased. The fall was noteworthy in just two of them: Slovakia (– 17 percentage points) and Romania (– 7 percentage points). Lithuania and Latvia, on the other hand, presented the highest increase (+ 10 and + 9 percentage points, respectively).

In Luxembourg, Germany, the Czech Republic, Malta and Slovenia, more than one in every ten people visited a cultural site at least seven times in the last 12 months (see Figure 11).

Table 6 shows the gender distinction among different age groups visiting cultural sites. Just as for cinema and live performances, women appeared to be the keenest visitors of cultural sites in most Member States. However, unlike the other activities, there was less concentration in the youngest age group. Compared with going to the cinema or attending a live performance, visiting cultural sites was the activity that least attracted men and women aged 25–34.

In most Member States, the group that made the most visits was women aged 25–34 (in seven Member States) or 35–44 (in six Member States). Luxembourg and Austria were the only countries where the highest rates were recorded in the 55–64 age group — without any major difference between men and women (around 85 % in Luxembourg and 65 % in Austria).

The share of the population that visited cultural sites, analysed by level of educational attainment, followed the same pattern as for the two other types of cultural activity: the higher the educational attainment level, the higher the percentage of visits to cultural sites (see Figure 12). With the exception of Greece, where 49 % of the population with high educational attainment visited cultural sites, the percentage in all other EU Member States was over 57 %, reaching almost 86 % in Luxembourg. Again, countries with big differences among the different educational levels also displayed the highest rates of people not having visited any cultural sites at all.

Data sources and availability

The data analysed in the present article come from the Adult Education Survey (AES) special modules on social and cultural participation.

Until now, the AES has been carried out twice: in 2007 first (on a gentlemen’s agreement) and in 2011 again (under EU legislation that time). As the specific module on cultural participation was optional in the 2011 AES, there are no 2011 AES data on this topic for Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, France, Croatia, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom (nor for Norway and Switzerland).

The AES coverage includes all the population aged 25–64. Data are available by age groups, sex and educational attainment (this variable using the International standard classification of education (ISCED).

No further special modules on cultural participation in the AES survey are planned in the future. Statistics on this theme, however, will be available from a special module of the EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) on social and cultural participation, which was undertaken in 2015.

Context

Culture is one of Europe’s greatest strengths: it is a source of values, identity and a sense of belonging. It also contributes to people’s well-being, to social cohesion and inclusion. The cultural and creative sectors are a driver of economic growth, job creation and external trade.

That is why culture is becoming increasingly important at EU level. In accordance with Article 167 of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU ‘shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common heritage to the fore’.

The EU supports these objectives through the Creative Europe programme, as well as a number of policy actions set out in the Work Plan for Culture 2015–2018, adopted by EU Culture Ministers in December 2014, sets out the main priorities for European cooperation in cultural policymaking: inclusive and accessible culture, the promotion of cultural heritage, support to the flowering of the cultural and creative sectors, and promotion of cultural diversity and of culture in EU external relations.

The production of reliable, comparable and up-to-date cultural statistics, which are the basis of sound cultural policymaking, are also a cross-sectoral priority of this Work Plan.

Eurostat compiles culture statistics from several data collections conducted at EU level to provide policy-makers and other users with information on the main trends in employment, business, international trade, participation and consumption patterns in the field of culture.

The Adult Education Survey module on cultural participation allowed a good insight into the cultural habits in the majority of the EU Member States (and two of the candidate countries: Serbia and Turkey).

Further Eurostat information

Data visualisation

Culture Statistics Illustrated

Publications

Database

Population and social conditions, see:

Culture (cult)

Cultural Participation and expenditure (cult_pcs)

Persons reading books in the last 12 months by sex and age (cult_pcs_bka)

Persons reading books in the last 12 months by sex and educational attainment level (cult_pcs_bke)

Persons reading newspapers in the last 12 months by sex (cult_pcs_nws)

Persons reading newspapers in the last 12 months by age (cult_pcs_nwa)

Persons reading newspapers in the last 12 months by educational attainment level (cult_pcs_nwe)

Persons participating in cultural activities in the last 12 months by sex and age (cult_pcs_caa)

Persons participating in cultural activities in the last 12 months by sex and educational attainment level (cult_pcs_cae)

Other information

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