We Don’t Know How to Close the Digital Divide, But We Can Figure it Out

Even though the election is still weeks away, it’s useful to look at one goal that most people share across the political spectrum: closing the digital divide, especially one based on income. Republican Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Ajit Pai, for example, recently released his own plan intended to spur broadband infrastructure investment in low-income areas. Given this bipartisan agreement about the goal, it’s time to think seriously about how to get there. As it turns out, we really don’t know the answer yet.

Like any normal good, where demand increases as income rise, wealthier people adopt broadband earlier and are willing (and able) to pay more for higher quality. Unlike many normal goods, as a society we hope that broadband access can help mitigate problems related to income inequality rather than being another symptom of it. The problem is that despite the FCC’s commitment to spending $2.5 billion per year subsidizing broadband for low-income people, we simply do not know how to close this divide. Broadband subscription rates for low-income people have increased rapidly, just as they have for upper-income people, but the gap in broadband adoption across income levels has remained relatively constant.