The release this week of a digital reader that can hold 200 books’ worth of text was hailed by technology writers as a breakthrough in reading that would put a bookcase full of novels in a handheld device. According to a sobering report this week from the National Endowment for the Arts, it will take a lot more than a new gadget to reverse the troubling decline in reading in America, which has implications for the country’s economy and civic well-being.

Wringing your hands about reading may seem like an effete concern, but as the NEA report highlights, devoting little time to reading not only stymies workers’ advancement, it erodes volunteerism and voting, key measures of civic participation.

The NEA report, which is based on a review of dozens of reports from other groups and government agencies, finds that there has been a sharp decline in reading among young adults, likely as a result of the proliferation of electronic media.

Only 22 percent of 17-year-olds reported reading daily for pleasure in 2004, down from 31 percent in 1984. Reading among 9-year-olds remained about the same. In 2006, 15- to 24-year-olds reported reading only seven to 10 minutes a day. They spent an average of two to two and a half hours per day watching television.

Not surprisingly, high school reading scores have dropped in recent years.

Sixty-three percent of employers rate reading proficiency as very important among applicants, yet 38 percent say that high school graduates are deficient in this area. Employees who aren’t proficient readers earn less and are less likely to be promoted, something that 70 percent of workers with less than basic reading skills acknowledge. Nonproficient readers are also more likely to drop out of high school and spend time in jail. They are less likely to volunteer or vote.

While the report did not offer solutions, NEA Chairman Dana Gioia offered this assessment: “‘To Read or Not To Read’ confirms – without any serious qualification – the central importance of reading for a prosperous, free society. The data here demonstrate that reading is an irreplaceable activity in developing productive and active adults as well as healthy communities.

“Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media, they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading,” he said in the report.

This is not to say that the Kindle, the electronic reader introduced this week by Amazon.com, won’t help. But making lots of books available on a small screen cannot solve the underlying problem of people losing their familiarity with and affinity for novels, poetry and other writing.

Further, reading blogs, Facebook entries and text messages is no replacement for reading Melville, Chekhov or Stephen King.