Estimating participation in the Affordable Connectivity Program

How can policymakers best estimate Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) eligibility and participation rates? The key finding here is that using 200% of the Federal Poverty Level as the only eligibility criteria significantly undercounts eligible households and therefore inflates participation rates. Further, the undercount varies significantly across states (which we hypothesize is linked to whether states expanded Medicaid eligibility after 2010). At the same time, more accurate eligibility estimations are only possible at the (Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMA) level, resulting in significant loss in geographical granularity in the analysis of ACP participation, since Universal Service Administrative Company reports data at the zip code level. The research thus proposes the use of an adjustment factor to better approximate the true number of ACP-eligible households at the zip5 level.