Race and the Digital Divide
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Robert W Fairlie
In recent years, a plethora of public and private programs in the United States have been created to close the "Digital Divide." Interestingly, however, we know very little about the underlying causes of racial differences in rates of computer and Internet access. In this paper, I use data from the Computer and Internet Use Supplement to the August 2000 Current Population Survey (CPS) to explore this question. Estimates from the CPS indicate that Mexican-Americans are roughly one-half as likely to own a computer and one-third as likely to have Internet access at home as whites. The black home computer rate is 59 percent of the white rate and the black home Internet access rate is 51 percent of the white rate. Using Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions, I find that racial differences in education, income and occupation contribute substantially to the black/white and Mexican-American/white gaps in home computer and Internet access rates. The digital divide between races, however, is not simply an "income divide" as income differences explain only 10 to 30 percent of the gaps in access to technology. I do not find evidence that price or school differences are responsible for the remaining gaps. I find some evidence, however, that language barriers may be important in explaining low rates of computer and Internet access among Mexican-Americans.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Contributions Article
- Contestable Licensing
- Willingness to Pay for Environmental Quality: Testable Empirical Implications of the Growth and Environment Literature
- Why Do the Poor and the Less-Educated Pay More for Long-Distance Calls?
- A Model of Welfare-Reducing Settlement
- How Does Job Loss Affect the Timing of Retirement?
- Information, the Introduction of Roths, and IRA Participation
- Willingness to Pay for Environmental Quality: Testable Empirical Implications of the Growth and Environment Literature: Comment
- Quantity Controls, License Transferability, and the Level of Investment
- Instrumental Variables for Binary Treatments with Heterogenous Treatment Effects: A Simple Exposition
- Do Parents Value Changes in Test Scores? High Stakes Testing in Texas
- Law Serials Pricing and Mergers: A Portfolio Approach
- Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Additional Theory and Evidence
- Poverty Measurement Under Risk Aversion Using Panel Data
- Anti-trade Bias in Trade Policy and General Equilibrium
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- Cost Recovery, Efficiency, and Economic Organization for Water Utilities
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