Kwon et al.(2005) showed that the size of the visual span-the number of adjacent letters reliably recognizable without moving the eyes-increases with grade level. Crowding of adjacent letters is likely to affect the size of the visual-span. Here, we ask if the developmental growth of the visual span is associated with a developmental decrease in crowding. Groups of 10 children in 3rd, 5th, and 7th grade, and 10 adults were tested. Visual-span profiles were based on letter-recognition accuracy for trigrams (random strings of three letters) centered at letter positions 0 to 5 left and right of the fixation point. We refer to the center letter of the trigram as the 'middle,' the one nearest the midline as the 'inner,' and the farthest from the midline as the 'outer.' The visual-span profile, a plot of percent-correct recognition vs. letter position can be decomposed into component profiles for 'inner', 'middle', and 'outer.' We define the visual-span size as the area under the profile, transformed to bits of information transmitted. Crowding is defined as the difference in the information transmitted for the component profiles for the outer and middle. The data revealed children showed a greater crowding effect than adults: 5.38(±0.32) bits for children, and 2.89(±0.52) bits for adults. Regression-analysis using crowding in bits as a predictor showed that about 52% of the variability in visual-span can be explained by crowding. Our findings suggest that the age-related decrease in crowding plays a role in explaining larger visual-spans and faster reading by adults.