July 9, 1999
Report Shows Increase in 'Digital Divide'
By DAVID E. SANGER
ASHINGTON -- A new
Federal survey shows that while minority groups are increasingly gaining access to computers and the Internet, the racial divide remains
stark, with blacks and Hispanics less
than half as likely as whites to explore the net from home, work or
school.
The study, the third and most comprehensive to be conducted by the
Commerce Department over the
past three years, reinforces the fear
that minority groups are increasingly at a disadvantage in competing for
the hottest entry-level jobs in the
country: those that require a knowledge of computers and comfort in
navigating the Internet.
But the study also contained some
new findings that add considerable
complexity to the ongoing debate
about how race, income level and
location affect access to the technology explosion of the 1990's. These are
among the findings:
¶Among families earning $15,000
to $35,000 per year, more than 32
percent of whites owned computers,
but only 19 percent of blacks and
Hispanics at comparable income levels had computers at home. That gap
widened from eight percentage
points five years ago, even as the
price of entry-level personal computers plunged.
¶Children in single-parent households have far less access to computers and the Internet than those in
two-parent households. A child in a
two-parent white household is nearly
twice as likely to have Internet access as a child in a one-parent white
household; the disparity is even
greater between single-parent and
two-parent black households.
¶The highest penetration of computers in households in the United
States can be found in largely rural,
cold-weather states, many of which
have pockets of high-technology jobs.
The lowest penetration is in southern
states where poverty and education
troubles still reign; outside the South
and Appalachia, New York was at
the bottom.
Larry Irving, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for communications and information, who oversaw
the study, said, "It is positive that we
doubled the number of computers
and Internet access for African-Americans and Hispanics over the
past four years, and it's great that
we have seen an increase of 50 percent in one year for use of the Net"
by minorities. But he said "it is abysmal that we still have a gap of 3 to 1
among the races" in Internet access
at home, "and that's what we have to
work on."
President Clinton drew on the
highlights of the report today during
the last leg of his tour of impoverished corners of the United States,
and announced several private-sector initiatives to make computers
more available to the poor, particularly in inner cities. But the White
House did not link today's study to
any new Government initiatives, arguing instead that the disparities
would be even greater if Clinton
had not pressed for more computers
in schools, libraries and community
centers.
Among those initiatives has been
an "E-rate" that reduces the cost of
internet access for schools and libraries in low-income areas, a program Republicans have sought to
limit because it is underwritten by
fees on telephone bills.
But mostly
the administration has relied on private sector grants, chiefly from computer and Internet companies.
"The message is that we need a lot
of heavy lifting in the private sector," Irving said today.
The study issued today echoes the
findings of several university and
corporate surveys of computer use.
But several of those have found an
even wider racial divide.
"The big question is why African-Americans are not adopting this
technology," said Donna L. Hoffman,
a professor of management at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
"It is not just price, because they are
buying cable and satellite system in
large numbers. So we have to look
deeper to cultural and social factors.
I think there is still a question of
'What's in it for me?' "
Some of the statistics in today's
study suggests that minorities are
beginning to answer that question. In
1994, only 10 percent of black households reported that they owned a
computer, versus 27 percent of white
households. Last year, the Census
Bureau found after door-to-door visits to a sampling of 48,000 households, the figure rose to 23 percent
for blacks and nearly 47 percent for
whites.
The divide is even greater when
the census bureau looked at use of
the internet from home. Last year,
about 27 percent of white households
had Internet access, compared with
about 9 percent of black and Hispanic households.
Black and Hispanic
computer users, unlike whites, are
more likely to have Internet access
outside the home than at home.
Not surprisingly, most of the divisions in computer use correlate to
income levels and education. Sixty-one percent of whites and 54 percent
of blacks in households earning more
than $75,000 used the internet regularly, but the figures drop to 17 percent of whites and 8 percent of blacks
when families are earning $15,000 to
$35,000.
Similarly families in which the
parents attended college were three
times more likely to access the internet from home than families where
the parents stopped their educaiton
after earning a high school diploma
or its equivalent.
One of the curious issues is why
single-parent families use computers and the Internet so much less
than two-parent families. "It's an
issue of money and interest," said
Prof. Hoffman.
Some of the most interesting figures in the study reveal a huge difference in computer use depending
on where in the country one lives.
Roughly one in four households in
Mississippi, West Virginia and Arkansas reported that they have home
computers. But more than half in
Califoria own at least one, and the
figure approaches two-thirds in
places like Utah and Alaska. About
40 percent of Texas households own
one, about the same figure as in
Massachusetts. Both are considered
high-tech centers: Dell and Compaq,
two of the biggest PC makers, are
both Texas-based corporations,
while much of the computer age began in the Boston suburbs.
The report, issued by the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration, is available
through its Web site, www.ntia.doc.gov. Printed copies may be ordered
by calling (202) 482-7002.
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