Hansi Lo Wang

With less than 100 days before the 2020 census is fully underway, rural communities caught in the digital divide are bracing for a potential undercount that could make it harder for them to advocate for resources over the next decade. For the first time, the US census will play out primarily online and only about 26% of households — mostly in areas with low Internet subscription rates — are set to receive paper questionnaires either in the mail or hand-delivered to their addresses by mid-March,

Just over half of Native Americans living on American Indian reservations or other tribal lands with a computer have access to high-speed internet service, according to new estimates from the US Census Bureau. The low rate of subscription to a high-speed internet service — 53 percent — in these often rugged, rural areas underscores the depth of the digital divide between Indian Country and the rest of the US Between 2013 and 2017, 82 percent of households nationally with a computer reported having a subscription to a broadband internet service.