The Digital Divide Thesis Re-Confirmed

Seen from these views, the Digital Divide still exists on several observable manifestations in terms of disparity between top and bottom groups including race/origin, education, income, geographic location and household type as well as growing percentage point trails between top and bottom ranked groups for each of these except geographic location in significant terms. And in each of these, the lowest ranked group shows an increasing percentage point trail behind leading groups. We see such happy events as parity between males and females and reciprocal displacement of top-ranked groups, but it impossible to dispute the historic lag of others. From an analytical perspective it is therefore not supportable to suggest that the Digital Divide is gone, or going soon. In fact, as we have combined our data and understanding of this phenomena, and as we have worked to define it, it is getting wider. As a matter of dimple fact we can see that historically under-serviced groups, particularly young people in primary education, are being left behind more privileged sectors of society. It seems cleat that anything less than a continued and determined effort to improve access for all Americans but most particularly our nation's children as they prepare for future responsibility is imperative.

The Underserviced

Now to this point I have largely focused on data that could be more or less meaningfully compared across reports and which considered the changing understanding that we have evolved in developing meaningful determinations of information inclusion. The available data has also allowed us to confirm the Digital Divide thesis with fairly simple means. The new report does contain the greatest amount of data ever assembled on the subject in any country, however, there is no further reason to restrict our discussion to data that are comparable to previous discussions at this point. It will be necessary to verge outside of this format if we are to evaluate the Bush administration's position as articulated by Victory. There is no reason to stick with NTIA data at all, the benefits of which fact I will avail myself in an examination of the Broadband Divide, the addition of which I present as a natural byproduct of our evolving understanding of information inclusion as much as the technologies themselves. This aspect will be a factor in my evaluation of distinct groups as well as being the subject of it's own discussion. I would also like to address a question that I have been steering away from up until now: who, specifically, is getting left out in the cold? We will start out by refocusing on some of our familiar groups.

Cogent attention has been paid by other researchers to the issue of dependence of certain variables such as race and income, race, income and location, race and education, etc. 022-10 demonstrates this so nicely that it's worth reprinting here:

Figure 2-10: Income and Education Have Independent Effects on Internet Use, Age 25

This chart demonstrates that usage is inversely related to income and education for a given age group and that these variables may function independently of one another.

To begin this phase of analysis I have again reprinted several more tables from 2002 directly. Household type:

Figure 5-11: Internet Use Among 10 to 17 Year-Olds By Household Type, 2001

In a continuance of previous trends, female-headed households continue to lag behind. 41.1% of young persons living in female-headed households do not use the internet from any location at any time at all.

Race:

0275-10: Internet Use Among 10 to 17 Year-Olds By Race/Ethnicity and Location, 2001

Not only does the above table show black 10-17 year olds seriously behind for 2001, but we see that 52.2% of Hispanics and 47.7% of blacks in this age group do not use the Internet at any time from any location. Compare this with 20.6 of Asians and Pacific Islanders and 20.3% of white kids in this age group. Hispanic and Black children show overall use rates of 47.8 and 52.3 percent, respectively. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Asian American and Pacific Islander and White children show overall Internet use levels of 79.4 and 79.7 percent, respectively. Hispanics in this age group trail Asian/Pacific Islanders by 31.6 percentage points, blacks by 5 and whites by 31.9 percentage points. Blacks trail Asian/Pacific I slanders by 27.1 percentage points and whites by 27.4. Thankfully, as we have seen previously, the percentage point trails are not increasing.

Income:

025-9:6, Internet Use Among 10 to 17 Year-Olds By Income and Location, 2001

With this information we can tell at a glance that 54.3% young persons living in households with incomes under $ 15,000 are not accessing the internet from any location at any time at all. Staggeringly, 40.45% of 10-17 year olds in households with incomes under $49,999 on average do not use the Internet at all.

The above table also demonstrates the crucial role that school and "other, not home" access plays for lower income persons. This is borne out by Table 025-12 which shows that for persons 10-17 who access the internet from school but not at home, the lower ranked categories demonstrate a greater likelihood to use internet connections in libraries.

It is rather frightening to think what the charts above would look like with out the fact of school or library use, or such initiatives as E-rate.

The preceding has done well to confirm my hypothesis but has still not given us a sufficiently granular view to determine where our studied populations converge. We can fairly safely profile our under serviced individual at this point, since I've been interested primarily in students, I'll assume that my at-risk profile is male or female, Black, Hispanic or other not white or API, rural or inner-city and from a single parent, low-income household. The US population as of July, 2001 was 284,796,887 but for data I've gone to the Census Berureau for 2000 estimate data and I'll use 276,059,000. From this source, there are 39,911000 persons between the ages of 9 and 20 years of age.

Home as opposed to anyplace else:

With the above two tables, we see our historic trends predictably present and we begin to get a better sense of how important a factor school use plays in effecting national averages such as are presented in my lengthy tabular discussion in preceding pages. The 2002 report allows that home Internet access may be thought of as a higher quality type of access because it is available (theoretically) 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while school or library access periods are limited to specific hours and often with time limits per session, and I would heartily agree. It is hard to imagine access to the Internet in school as being equivalent to having such a study resource as a connected computer at home. A connected computer can function as a dictionary, a thesaurus, an encyclopedia and a research library not to mention as a communications device. This certainly builds upon our perception of the question of Internet access as being one of degree rather than yes or no and it is a question to which we will return.

The Broadband Divide

The subject of broadband services requires a brief discussion. Fist, there is no objective measure of what broadband is and no criteria as to what it consists of. The term "broadband' historically is a term that was used to describe multiplexed data streams which exist on distinct frequency ranges over a single cable. The cable that broadband is transmitted over is coaxial, this having enough bandwidth capability in terms of frequency capacity (1Ghtz) to utilize for distinct data streams. This might be useful if one intends to run distinct services over one cable such as is being done with many cable modems today wherein you have both cable TV and Internet service running over the same cable. The capability exists, in terms of cable capability, to run other streams such as telephone, audio, videoconferencing etc. at the same time. At any rate, the term "broadband" has become the ubiquitous term for a really fast Internet connection, one capable of supporting multimedia rich web content and streaming media. For our purposes, the prevalent acceptance of anything that can deliver bi-directional (symmetrical) data delivery of 200Kbps qualifies. Therefore, our list of broadband-capable provision methods include T-1, FT-1 (of 200Kbps or more), cable modem, DSL (of over 200Kbps or more) and satellite. Fiber optic transmission media effect our conversation only indirectly as it is a "middle mile" medium not associated with the end customer in terms of the provision method that they select.

According to 2002 data, traditional dial up connection over plain old telephone service (POTS) accounts for 80.0 percent of individual access. Cable modems account for 12.9 percent and DSL accounts for 6.6 percent. We must assume that the remainder gain access from T-1, satellite or fiber optic, a surprisingly low amount considering the masses of office or academic institution workers enjoying supreme levels of connectivity which is zealously and jealously administered by multi-tiered IT departments. I have held the NTIA data to be sound to date however, and I will maintain this position throughout.

The lack of historical data presented makes simple trend analysis such as I have relied upon useless, but here are some figures. We see groups excluding rural maintaining pace with each other, and rural trailing as predicted.

Data from 024-2: Higher-Speed Internet Connection by Geographic Areas a Percent of Total U.S. Internet Households

This makes for thin observation indeed. Interestingly, the document from which many of these observations seem based is equally deficient on substantive data. High-Speed Services for Internet Access: Subscribership as of June 30, 2001 report released by the Industry Analysis Division of the FCC Common Carrier Bureau February 2002 contains the language of the Bush administrations findings of the resolution of the Digital Divide in a timely manner and the origins of this language. I will leave the very pointed conclusion that might be drawn from the Bush administration's position with respect to motivation on the Digital Divide to the reader's initiative. This report purportedly contains the latest reliable data in broadband penetration although it pains me to see such a finely crafted report as NTIA's 2002 rely upon such a comparatively crude base.

The FCC report finds that 97% of the population "has" broadband access or the ability to obtain it. As of 2000, about 98 percent of public schools had connections to the Internet. 96 percent of the nation's most wealthy Zip codes have high-speed Internet access but only 59 percent of the poorest ones. 98 percent of the most densely populated Zip codes have at least one high-speed Internet customer as compared to less than 40 percent of rural Zip codes.

The report further finds that 77 percent of public schools with Internet access used dedicated lines to connect, 24 percent used other continuous connections. 11 percent of schools used dial-up connections to access the Internet. The report notes that because dedicated lines tend to support higher-speed services, the report's authors believe that high speed and advanced services are becoming more widely available in schools.

The usefulness of these observations is limited. We have no way of determining if populations measured converge and we have no way of telling which variables might be dependent. We can basically conclude that broadband penetration shows tendencies consistent with other rates of penetration, i.e. the relationship between penetration and geographic location and income.

The lucidity of certain of these observations are dubious. The figure of 97% broadband "access" is in fact an extremely gross measure of availability of broadband services because the finding is positive where at least one entity of any type in a given zip code has broadband service. This imprecise metric was used out of sensitivity to competitive concerns of service providers who are themselves the reporters of the core data used in the report. Given as all transmission media are included, such as T-1, fiber optic and satellite-media that are unaffordable to all but wealthy individuals or businesses, this is a near-useless metric in determining access and availability to the general population and particularly for under serviced groups for reasons which I will briefly introduce:

Distance limitations for data over existing copper cables which are used for telephones (a major barrier to DSL penetration)

Distance limitations in coaxial cable. With the above, this indicates that although one entity in a Zip code may have access, it by no means guarantees that all entities in that Zip code have access.

Existing cable quality is degraded with age (again a major barrier to DSL penetration. The frequency-spectrum required for analog phone conversation is far below that which is required for digital data transmission. A host of environmental and other factors can degrade data transmission performance over what is essentially an analog PBX infrastructure.)

To make matters worse, user categories in this report are divided into "home/small business" and "other' which disallows any examination of our groups of interest.

And in a final coup-des-gras, due to privacy concerns, the government data shows aggregated data for clusters of zip codes and the clusters have no geographic indicator making regional and local analysis impossible. The report findings are derived from data aggregated by Zip code but every published report I could find omitted these tables. The report does have information on broadband services broken out by state but this information exists in much fuller context elsewhere.

The Broadband Divide in Schools

University of California at Irvine's Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations concludes that. Only 16% of schools in low-income communities have high-speed Internet access (T1 lines or faster), whereas 37% of schools in wealthier communities have some form of broadband access. Although this report addresses the issue of broadband divide current to 1998, it does not contain figures for cable modem connectivity which limits it's usefulness as a continuing metric. 1998, Ronald E. Anderson and Amy Ronnkvist.

The Educationweek survey New Divides, May 2001 gives us (as it gave to the FCC) the most comprehensive figures on state-by-state internet and broadband penetration in schools as well as other figures such as average numbers of computers per per student per state. The data are incomplete in certain regards as inconsistencies in reporting still exist among states, but for a "first-go-round" it's an admirable job and will serve as a metric for continuing observation. The state-by-state figures show that schools with high concentrations of poverty or high minority enrollment consistently rank behind other schools in terms of Internet access and broadband provision.

The Educationweek report finds that in schools where 71 percent or more of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunch, 39 percent of classrooms have Internet access compared with 74 percent of classrooms in schools where fewer than 11 percent of students are eligible for subsidized lunch.

The picture below is table 021-2, The Rapid Increase in Internet Use in the United States Across States.

Table 021-2: The Rapid Increase in Internet Use in the United States Across States

From the above we see the rapid penetration of Internet access showing a marked disparity between North and South. As the color code is a little small to be legible, the dark gray = >50% total Internet population, the medium gray = approx. 50% and the white = <50% of the population using the internet.

If we take data from the New Divides survey and do similar charting, we see a similar trend for schools with Internet access:

Here we see a concentration of schools in the lower range of our spectrum down South. This would appear to be consistent with our anticipated trends so far. We also see a concentration of challenged states in the Northeast.

From our experiences to date, we might expect similar trends to manifest for certain factors as race or income. We also might expect to see the same for broadband penetration. Happily, with schools, this does not appear to be the case, or it is not so acutely the case in geographic terms by state.

The next three charts represent percentage schools with high-minority enrollment by state, high-poverty schools with internet access by state, and percentage of connected schools with broadband provision by state. Those states indicated in white did not report relevant statistics.

It would appear from the analysis above that the "broadband divide" does not follow the regional trends that we have seen to date. Below, we focus on high-poverty schools with high-speed access by state. If anything, it appears that Northern states with high-poverty connected schools are having a tougher time than their southern counterparts.

The above maps were made using the Map Maker Utility. It's a wonderful web-enabled piece of software that's well worth a bookmark. I suppose I have copyright to the maps above.

In the above view, Northeast states seem to have the highest concentrations of connected high-minority schools with the lowest rates of broadband connectivity.

In all, the broadband divide manifests along racial and economic lines, similar to other aspects of the Digital Divide that we have seen but this divide does not manifest on regional geographic lines by state. Additionally, as pointed out almost universally, broadband penetration rates show the strongest direct relationship for geographic category as ranked by Urban, Rural and Central City. It is almost universally observed that broadband services do not carry profit inducement sufficient to drive such an aggressive build out as we have seen with other technologies. In a nutshell, where population density drives sales concentration down to one or several customers per square mile, there is little profit incentive to build out services. The Broadband Divide therefore does not follow the regional distributions patterns of previous Digital Divide metrics but it does follow the geographic location pattern and the economic pattern. This extra-governmental data has supported the Digital Divide thesis.

Other findings in the Educationweek report appear to be more telling than the regional effect, namely, the degree of training received by educators in the new technologies, the level of support that was available to educators and students and most importantly the ratio of computers to students. Additional elements that we a see are statistics indicating weather or not these schools provided access to technologies after hours or outside the context of structured curricula, the manner in which technologies were used in the curricula and nature of the technologies themselves. These late observations reflect a growing understanding amongst educators that technology access is not a yes/no affair, but one of many qualifiers and questions of degree. We will revisit this theme as we evaluate the benefits of computers and technology to young people.

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