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Quick Facts
Digital
Divide
Acceptable
Use Policies
Tools
for Teachers
Uses
in the Classroom
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The
Divide Widens
The latest report from
the US Department of Commerce, called Falling Through the Net: Defining
the Digital Divide, is an update on the use of information technology
in the US among various racial and demographic groups. Data from 48,000
households across the US was collected by the Census Bureau in 1997-1998
for this report (all figures in US dollars).
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Those with a college
degree were more than eight times as likely to have a computer at
home, and nearly 16 times as likely to have Internet access at home,
as those with an elementary education.
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A high-income
household in an urban area was more than 20 times as likely as a
rural, low-income household to have Internet access.
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A child in a
low-income white family was three times as likely to have Internet
access at home as a child in a comparable black family, and four times
as likely to have access as children in a Hispanic household.
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A child in a
dual-parent white household was nearly twice as likely to have
Internet access as a child in a white single-parent household; a child
in a dual-parent black family was almost four times as likely to have
access as a child in a single-parent black family.
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Among families
earning $15,000 to $35,000 per year, more than 32 per cent of whites
owned computers, compared to 19 per cent of blacks and Hispanics.
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Twenty-seven per cent
of white households surveyed had access to the Internet, compared to
approximately nine per cent of both black and Hispanic households.
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In households earning
more than $7
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