Home internet access and usage in the USA: Trends in the socio-economic digital divide

Abstract

Past research has found evidence of the existence of a significant digital divide among various socio-economic segments in terms of Internet access and usage. In this research, we use two annual (2002 and 2008) cohorts of demographically representative national random samples to investigate the relative levels of digital divide along the typical socio-economic fault lines. We find from our statistical analyses that not only does a deep digital divide still persist along key dimensions (like education) of the socio-economic fault lines, it has in fact widened along several key dimensions (like income and urban-rural divide). © 2011 by the Association for Information Systems.