Author: Heather Haught
“Today high speed broadband is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.” — President Obama, Jan. 14, 2015
The U.S. leads the world in information communication technology development, most notably broadband Internet. Evidence suggests that these technologies have a profound impact on economic growth and social mobility. Although significant increases in broadband availability have been achieved in recent decades, some groups have benefitted more from these increases than others. The Council of Economic Advisors to the White House, for instance, published an article in July 2015 showing that across the nation, individuals with lower levels of income have limited access to broadband and are less likely to use it when it is available.1 Such disparities in broadband access and use are commonly referred to as the digital divide.
The present article explores the digital divide in North Carolina. Since 1999, NC Broadband has partnered with East Carolina University to conduct the Citizen Survey2, which examines broadband Internet adoption rates throughout the state. Results revealed that the proportion of households in North Carolina that subscribe to Internet increased rapidly from 36 percent to 80 percent between 1999 and 2010, but has remained relatively constant since.
Consistent with the findings discussed above, lower income households were less likely to subscribe to Internet than higher income households. Critically, this disparity has increased by 53 percent since 1999.
In sum, these findings demonstrate that income-based disparities exist in North Carolina and have grown overtime. However, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie this effect. Future research would benefit from investigating these mechanisms and examining whether similar patterns exist for other socio-demographic variables such as educational attainment, sex, and race.
References
1 Mapping the Digital Divide (July, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/wh_digital_divide_issue_brief.pdf
2 Citizen Survey (1999-2014) https://ncbroadband.gov/info/research--4/citizen-survey