A report released yesterday by the US national endowment for the arts says the number of adults who read no literature increased by more than 17 million between 1992 and 2002.

It found that 47% of American adults read poems, plays or narrative fiction in 2002, a drop of seven percentage points from a decade earlier. Those reading any books at all in 2002 fell to 57%, from 61%.

The NEA chairman, Dana Gioia, said the findings were shocking.

"We have a lot of functionally literate people who are no longer engaged readers," Mr Gioia said. "This isn't a case of 'Johnny Can't Read', but 'Johnny Won't Read'.

"We're seeing an enormous cultural shift from print media to electronic media, and the unintended consequences of that shift."

A total of 89.9 million adults did not read books in 2002. The number of books bought in the US in 2003 was reported in May to have fallen by 23m from the year before, to 2.2 bn.

The NEA study was based on a survey of more than 17,000 adults. The drop in reading was widespread, but the fall was marked for adult men, of whom only 38% read literature, and Hispanics overall, for whom the figure was 26.5%.

The decline was especially severe among 18 to 24-year-olds. Only 43% had read any literature in 2002, down from 53% in 1992.