Broadband and Cities

New analysis of broadband adoption in a selection of cities shows a strong relationship between low household broadband adoption levels and poverty. The analysis also shows that rising economic tides in cities has little to do with recent growth in broadband adoption – but that declines in poverty rates do.

The analysis — conducted for the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition and the Kansas City Public Library — focused on Kansas City because of its role as Google’s first “Fiber City.” The research, using American Community Survey (ACS) data, compared Kansas City (the combined cities in Missouri and Kansas) to a set of comparable cites on broadband adoption. As Google’s first Fiber City in 2011, Kansas City became a focal point for discussion on the digital divide, in part because Google brought resources to help address the problem. Did the digital divide narrow from 2013 to 2018 more rapidly in Kansas City than in other comparable cities? The answer, for Kansas City, is mixed.