`Digital divide' growing wider Graph of report results BY DAVID PLOTNIKOFF Mercury News Staff Writer http://www.sjmercury.com/business/tech/docs/net072898.htm The Clinton administration's first statistical portrait of digital haves and have-nots since the explosion of the Internet, expected to be released today, shows that while home-computer use and online access have increased dramatically across the board, some alarming disparities first noted in 1995 have deepened. According to the study, obtained Monday by the Mercury News, blacks and Hispanics overall are falling farther behind whites in computer ownership. (Asian-American households were not broken out in the study.) The gap between high-income and low-income households in computer ownership also has widened. The report by the Department of Commerce, the government's first detailed look at the nation's wired and unwired in three years, comes as the administration's Net-access initiatives -- such as the ``e-rate'' subsidy for schools and libraries -- are coming under intense scrutiny from Congress and taxpayer groups. ``Falling Through the Net II: New Data on the Digital Divide,'' commissioned by Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is based on a Census Bureau survey of 48,000 homes in October 1997. It is a corollary to the department's landmark ``Falling Through The Net,'' published in July 1995 and based on a 1994 survey. The new study found that nationwide, 36.6 percent of respondents had home computers, up from 24.1 percent in 1995. Twenty-six percent had a computer equipped with a modem, up from 11 percent. Income is key factor A Commerce official involved in both studies said the data to be released today could indicate that income, rather than race, may be the key factor in technology adoption in coming years: ``We have exponentially more minorities online now than we did three years ago, and some evidence that middle- and upper-middle-class Hispanics and blacks are using these technologies. But for low-income people, black or white, there's real cause for concern.'' Computer ownership is now at 19.4 percent for Hispanics and 19.3 for blacks, while ownership among white households is 40.8 percent. The gap in PC ownership between white and black households, which was 16.8 percentage points in 1995, is now 21.5 points. The gap between white and Hispanic households increased from 14.8 points to 21.4 points. Still, PC penetration rates grew faster among black and Hispanic households than among white households. A statistically small set of households of ``other'' races, which includes Asian-Americans and American Indians, had the highest proportion of PC ownership, at 47 percent in the most recent study. Some racial disparities in PC ownership existed regardless of income level. Even at incomes higher than $75,000, whites were 12 percentage points more likely to own computers than blacks. Yet, above the $75,000 level, use by Hispanics and whites was within four percentage points. As for online use, 21.2 percent of whites were plugged in, vs. 7.7 percent of blacks and 8.7 percent of Hispanics. The ``other'' category again was tops, at 25.2 percent. There was no comparable figure from the previous study. When broken down by income level, some disparities also expanded in the past three years. The study said the gap in PC ownership between households earning $10,000-$14,999 and those earning $50,000-$74,999 grew from 38.2 percentage points in 1995 to 47.7 points. In the current study, those earning $50,000-$74,999 were nearly twice as likely to own a computer as those earning $25,000-$34,999. As in 1994, there were sharp correlations between educational attainment and technology adoption. Nationally, college graduates were four times as likely to have online access as high school graduates. Data on computer use and online connections confirmed that a generational gap persists. From 40 percent to 50 percent of people from 25 to 54 years old owned PCs. But only 21 percent of those 55 and older did. The figures for online use were similar: Those aged 25-54 reported online-use rates between 22 and 26 percent. Of respondents 55 and older, only 8.8 percent were online. `Gaps haven't gone away' Vanderbilt University business Professor Donna Hoffman, who recently co-authored the only other major study of Net use and race, said the Commerce figures should be a wake-up call to those who had assumed that cyberspace would naturally come to reflect society as a whole over time. ``We found similar disparities in income, education and race,'' Hoffman said. ``When we published our figures (in the journal Science) in April, we got a number of interesting reactions. A lot of educators and community activists said, `Thank God someone found the numbers to prove what we knew all along.' And others said, `Why are you even bothering to do this? There may have been a problem, but the gaps are getting better.' Well, it seems that's not true. The gaps haven't gone away. This certainly supports the steady stream of research that shows the digital divide is real.'' ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done directly from our website for all our lists. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
