Digital Denied: The Impact of Systemic Racial Discrimination on Home-Internet Adoption

In this report, we demonstrate that communities of color find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide for home-Internet access – both in terms of adoption and deployment – in a manner that income differences alone don’t explain. Once we control for other economic and demographic factors that contribute to this divide, the data illustrate persistent broadband adoption and deployment gaps for people of different races and ethnicities. We find that several personal and household characteristics are associated with home-Internet adoption, including race and ethnicity, along with family income, educational attainment, and use of the Internet at work or school. There are however large differences in some of these factors depending on a person’s race or ethnicity.

We conclude that public policies aimed at closing the digital divide must focus on correcting failures endemic to the home-Internet market, such as supra-competitive pricing, provider cross-subsidization, and the lack of a functioning resale/wholesale market. Confronting these market failures would increase the ability of people in marginalized communities to access advanced telecommunications services and purchase those services in an equitable manner.