Digital Distress in the Upper Midwest

Digital distress is defined as census tracts that have a higher percent of homes not subscribing to the internet or subscribing only through a cellular data plan as well as a higher percent of homes with no computing devices or relying only on mobile devices, no laptops or desktops. About 8.1 percent of the upper Midwest’s population (or 4.3 million people) lived in digitally distressed areas as of 2017. Digitally distressed areas had a higher share of homes relying only on cellular data or mobile devices, not subscribing to the internet, or not owning any computing device. Now that we know that digitally distressed areas exist in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin and that most are concentrated in urban areas, we turn our attention to the socioeconomic characteristics of these distressed places: age, race/ethnicity, employment, commuting pattern, education, and median household income.