Definition
LIT2 (V155) indicates whether the woman could read. This variable is available beginning with Phase 4 of the DHS.
Persons with less than secondary school education were asked to demonstrate their literacy level by reading aloud a sentence on a card and were classified as "cannot read at all," "able to read only parts of sentence," and "able to read whole sentence." As with LIT1 (V108), those with secondary or higher schooling were presumed to have attained the highest literacy level.
For Phases 1-3 of the DHS, information on literacy was collected using a different approach, by simply asking whether the person could read (LIT1). See LITBRIG for information about using the data on literacy across all phases of the DHS.