Why the South lags behind when it comes to home broadband use

States in the Deep South have among the lowest rates in the country of households connected to broadband. The reason is pretty obvious once you also look at median household income.

Mississippi, the state with the lowest rate of broadband use, also has the lowest median household income in the country: just below $38,000. Other Southern states with low connectivity rates ranked near the bottom when it came to incomes, too. States with higher incomes in the Northeast and on the West Coast report higher median household incomes -- and higher levels of home broadband use. This suggests that the biggest barrier to someone having access to the online world is cost. More than half of Americans in households making less than $25,000 per year live in a home without an Internet subscription, compared to about 5 percent of those living in households making more than $150,000 per year.