The Gap Nobody Wants to Name: Reading Is the New Rich

What’s actually real, backed by the numbers

Two figures published this week, which look unrelated at first glance, tell the same story. The first: PISA 2025 results show Asian countries hold seven of the top ten spots in math — China leading with 612 points, followed by Singapore, Macao, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, with Estonia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands leading Europe. Neither North America nor Latin America crack the top ranks. The second: 40% of adults didn’t read a single book in 2025, and only 31% of people earning under $30,000 a year read anything, versus 15% of those earning $75,000-plus who also don’t read — meaning even among the well-off, not reading is closer to the norm than the exception, just slightly less so.

What nobody tells you: the gap isn’t about access — it’s about habit, and habit already has a price

This is where most takes fall short: they assume the problem is access to education or to books. It isn’t, at least not mainly. A book costs less today, in real terms, than it did twenty years ago, and free access to quality educational content — courses, articles, even AI models that can explain anything — is greater than at any point in history. The real scarce resource became deep attention, not content. And while that happens, increasingly precise algorithms trained on a single objective — maximizing screen time, not the judgment of whoever’s watching — are competing for the attention of a generation growing up hooked on the easy dopamine of short-form video. It’s no coincidence that whoever already has the habit of reading, thinking slowly, and holding a complex idea for fifteen straight minutes is, more and more, the same person who makes better financial decisions. Sustained attention isn’t a cultural luxury — it’s the same capacity you need to read an investment prospectus, understand a loan contract, or resist selling in a panic when markets drop. Add the demographic crisis we were already discussing in this column yesterday, and the result is a gap that isn’t just educational: it’s economic, financial, and behavioral, and it widens every quarter that passes without anyone naming it out loud.

The real opportunity: treat attention the way you treat capital

My take, after years of watching portfolios and watching people, is simple: if you want to be on the right side of this gap — for yourself, or for your kids — you have to start protecting your attention with the same discipline you protect your money. You don’t need to become a voracious reader overnight. You need one screen-free hour a day, spent on something that demands slow thinking: a book, a long report, a real problem. That’s not nostalgia — it’s the highest-compounding investment there is, because the judgment you build determines every financial decision you’ll make for the rest of your life. AI can help you summarize, synthesize, and move faster — the CRITERIO Method says it plainly: technology informs, but judgment decides, and judgment doesn’t get outsourced.

Which side of this gap are you building your habit on today — and the habits of the people around you? If you want to keep following this conversation with real data, every morning, subscribe to the ViSFI Daily Briefing.