Digital Inequity Decreased by One-Third in 13 Months, Yet Black and Latinx Students Remain Disproportionately Impacted

From April 2020 to May 2021, the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), a Michelson Spark Grantee, studied the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on digital inequity, particularly among school-age children in California. Researchers leveraged 2019 census data from over 35,000 households in California to establish the pre-COVID baseline as they considered how ethnic groups, income levels, educational attainment, and locality impacted device access and connectivity. The findings are published in Achieving Digital Equity for California’s Students. PPIC found that the digital equity gap decreased by approximately one-third during the pandemic, although much work remains. Takeaways include:

• Rates of reliable internet increased 4.7 percent, among households whose head has less than a bachelor’s degree;
• Among low-income households, rates of reliable internet increased 8.6 percent while device access increased 26.4 percent;
• Black households experienced a 13.6 percent increase in reliable internet and a 28.2 percent increase in device access;
• Device access among Latino households increased 16.7 percent;