Introduction

    The use of the Internet is an embedded component of our current culture's information age. The Internet provides the opportunity for minute by minute exchanges at the macro-level of global communications while also facilitating micro-level personal networks. Using the World Wide Web, email, Facebook and blogging are all essential parts of many people's daily life activities. This transformation of technological incorporation into every aspect of social life has been relatively swift, although not all-inclusive. Like other important resources (e.g., access to quality education, clean air and water, nutritious food, health care and employment opportunities) access to digital technology is linked to social status and that has consequences. Lacking access to this ever-present means of communicating and sharing information produces and perpetuates social inequality. A call for sociological research focused on the digital divide was issued by DiMaggio et al., (2001) who emphasized examining inequality in location of access (home, work, public facilities) (p. 314). The present study responds to this call for research on the location of access to the Internet. While aspects of the digital divide has been addressed to some extent in prior research studies (e.g., Bimber 2000; Martin and Robinson 2007; Mossberger, Kaplan and Gilbert 2008; Wilson, Wallin and Reiser 2003), in government reports by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NITA) and in public policy documents (e.g., Vision 2030 2000; Rural Prosperity Taskforce 2000), more examination of trends in home Internet access is needed. In this paper we present results from a unique data set compiled from six studies conducted across twelve years in the state of North Carolina. We focus specifically on the numbers of households with Internet access to ascertain how readily people can use this technological tool. We examine how gaps in access to information technology are associated with various aspects of social stratification. Using these longitudinal data we investigate who is connected with home Internet access and evaluate trends in the digital divide across time.

Literature Review

    The digital divide is the gap between those who are connected to the Internet and able to participate actively in the digital age versus those who are not connected and thereby "falling through the net" (NTIA 2000). The digital divide, like other issues of social inequality, is analyzed by examining differences by group characteristics (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, age and residence). Similar to other goods and services used in a household, having Internet access at home requires investment and commitment on the part of the service provider, community and consumer. The advancement of technological access to the public was promoted by the U.S. federal government. In October 1993, the U.S. Department of Commerce adopted the goal of providing universal telecommunication and Internet access (NTIA 1993) and there has been continued attention to that goal through to the present. Research produced by NTIA regularly documents growth in the number of U.S. households that have a home computer and home Internet access (NTIA 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2010, 2011a, 2011b). Their most recent report shows about 71 percent of households in the U.S. have home Internet access (NTIA 2011b: 5). The increase in Internet access documented by NTIA across time is notable but it falls short (by about 30%) of the goal of universal access. President Obama reaffirmed the commitment at the federal level to "connecting every part of America to the digital age" (NTIA 2011a: 2). However, providing the opportunity to connect does not guarantee the elimination of the digital divide because having home Internet access is neither free nor inexpensive. Aside from the occasional special offers that are offered by any particular company, our online search for the cost of having home Internet service in NC showed that $30 is typically the minimum and this tallies up to $360 per year--- not an insignificant amount. One NC service provider frequently advertises that customers can reduce their Internet charge to $25 per month, but only if additional services are purchased (i.e., household telephone and television cable service). A regional provider of Internet service in NC has recently implemented a gigabyte usage allowance that monitors customer's monthly use and charges additional fees for exceeding set limits (see suddenlink.com/allowanceplan). These indicators do not bode well for bridging the digital divide. In the following paragraphs we present what prior research has shown about differences by group characteristics in home Internet access.

Social Stratification Variables

    Race/Ethnicity: Previous research has shown racial/ethnic disparity in home Internet access. Studies have found that whites are more likely to have home computers and home Internet access than are African Americans/Blacks or Hispanics (NTIA 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000; Lenhart 2000). According to the Current Population Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in October of 2010, nearly every racial/ethnic group had increased adoption of broadband Internet at home since 2009 (NTIA, 2011b). However, racial/ethnic differences continue to persist with non-whites being more likely to lack access. A neighborhood level study focusing on three cities by Mossberger et al. (2008) found that living in areas with a high percentage of African Americans and high rates of poverty reduced the likelihood of having home Internet access compared to areas with majority white residents and lower rates of poverty. This research shows evidence that the racial digital divide is produced and persists in part due to neighborhood racial segregation and concentrated poverty. 

    Gender: Studies in the early 2000's documented gender differences with women being less likely than men to own computers and have home Internet access (Bimber 2000; Lenhart 2000; NTIA 2000). There is evidence of a decreasing gender digital divide (Day, Janus and Davis 2005; NTIA 2002). Research by Bimber (2000) using telephone survey data collected in 1999  found that the gender difference in having Internet access (defined as access at home, work or school) was explained away by differences between women and men in educational attainment, income and age. This finding shows the intersectionality of sociodemographic characteristics and the complicated nature of rectifying differences in access.

    Age: Prior research has shown a negative relationship between age and having home Internet access (Jones and Fox 2009; Lenhart 2000). Data collected in 2000 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed a "gray gap" in the digital divide with only 13 percent of respondents over age 64 having home Internet access compared with 65 percent of those under age 30 (Lenhart 2000:10). Jones and Fox (2009) report finding an increase for all age groups in having home access to broadband Internet in the mid 2000's, yet people in older age groups continued to lag behind those in younger groups.

     Geographic Region: Prior research documents an urban-rural digital divide with people living in rural areas being less likely to have home Internet access compared to people living in suburban and urban places (Lenhart 2000; NTIA 2000; Rural Prosperity Task Force 2000). Research by Boase (2010) using telephone survey data collected in 2004 found that the negative relationship between rural residence and the likelihood of having high-speed Internet at home decreased after controlling for differences in personal networks, age, education and occupation. However, accounting for these factors did not eliminate the rural-urban digital divide. Whitacre (2010) used data collected in 2003 and in 2006 in Oklahoma and found that in both time periods fewer rural (or noncore) residents had home Internet access compared to those in non-rural places. Together these studies indicate the persistence of the digital divide and show a need for continued efforts at extending broadband technology to rural areas.

    Household Income: Having home Internet access requires a computer, a subscription to Internet access services and a level of income to afford both. Studies have consistently documented a positive relationship between income and home Internet access (Bimber 2000; NTIA 2000, 2002; Martin and Robinson 2007; Mossenberger et al. 2008; Whitacre 2010; Wilson et al. 2003). The way in which group differences in household income serve to produce and perpetuate social inequality is a key factor in our system of social stratification. The extent to which household income explains other group differences in the digital divide (see e.g., Bimber 2000; Mossenberger et al. 2008) shows the crucial importance of universal access being considered the type of service where everyone is connected.  
 

Research Questions

    In this study, we focus on the relationship between having home Internet access and social stratification characteristics. We focus on home Internet access in North Carolina – an understudied state with high rates of poverty (rank of 13th highest in the nation at 17.5% in 2010); low median household income (rank of 40th in the nation at $43,326 in 2010); high percentage of minority group members (rank of 8th highest in nation at 21.5% of the population identifying as Black or African American in 2010); and a high school dropout rate of 5.2% in 2007 ranking it as 11th highest in the nation (LINC, 2012). Indications of the digital divide are likely to be especially salient in a state with these characteristics and examining changes over time may shed light on the production and perpetuation of social inequality. We ask, how does home Internet access vary by social stratification characteristics? What differences in home Internet access by social stratification characteristics are found over time? To answer these research questions we use a unique data set compiled from six studies in North Carolina conducted across twelve years.

 
Data and Methods

     Officials in the state of North Carolina recognize the need for universal Internet access to spread the benefits of economic development and increase citizen access to state government (Vision 2030, 2000; Rural Prosperity Taskforce, 2000). North Carolina is unique among states in having a detailed chronological record that documents changes in citizens' access, attitudes and adoption of broadband Internet. Six waves of the Citizen Survey have been completed. Beginning in 1999 and continuing through 2011 the e-NC Authority commissioned researchers at East Carolina University to collect data pertaining to access and use of the Internet and computers from residents of the state as well to document the changes in these behaviors over time. These data have been collected from users of dial-up and broadband and from those with no access to the Internet. Results from these surveys have informed development of policy and programmatic efforts of the e-NC Authority to ensure that all citizens in North Carolina have Internet access and the ability to use this critical infrastructure. Results have been validated by the convergence of access data obtained from broadband service providers and other third parties sources. Confidence in this survey approach is high, leading to continued use of the Citizen Survey as an important planning tool in North Carolina's Broadband Data Development and Planning Project funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program administered by the NTIA, U.S. Department of Commerce.

     This study uses data from six state-wide surveys completed between 1999 and 2011. Random stratified samples of households in North Carolina were used for each wave of data collection. Telephone interviews with respondents were completed in the Community Research Lab at East Carolina University. The surveys document the level of computer ownership and home Internet access in addition to collecting demographic information. Together these six surveys form a longitudinal design that focuses on the same population (i.e., residents of North Carolina) but the same set of respondents were not tracked across time. We apply sampling weights to make our results representative of the state's population. The specifics of each survey are described below.

    Details for Six Citizen Surveys: The first telephone survey was conducted in 1999 with 522 completed interviews. For this study, the survey instrument developed for the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology focused on public perceptions about the importance of science and technology in the North Carolina economy and included questions about citizens' computer usage and Internet access. This effort laid the groundwork for the follow-up surveys.
 
    The second telephone survey was completed in 2001. This study was instigated by the Rural Internet Access Authority in an effort to extend the work started by Vision 2030. The focus was on collecting information from citizens about computers and Internet access that would be relevant to local decisions makers in every part of the state. Independent random samples were drawn from all 100 counties in North Carolina. A total of 12,904 interviews were completed. In 2004, a third telephone survey was conducted to continue tracking computer and Internet use in North Carolina and 1,197 interviews were completed. Several interviews were conducted in Spanish by a bi-lingual interviewer. The fourth telephone survey was conducted in 2008 with 1,244 completed interviews. This study offered contacted respondents the opportunity to respond via a web questionnaire if they preferred it to completing the telephone interview. Households without landlines were also sampled to incorporate cell phone only users. (Five percent of the final sample consisted of households with cell phones but without landlines.) These innovations continued to be employed in subsequent surveys. In 2010 the fifth telephone survey was completed with 1,234 interviews. (The proportion of cell phone respondents increased to 17% in this study.) Quotas were used to insure adequate representation of both urban and rural NC counties. The sixth telephone survey was conducted in 2011 with 1,250 completed interviews. About nine percent of the households interviewed reported that they did not have landline telephones. Together these surveys provide a unique and valuable data set to investigate trends in the digital divide.


    For each of the surveys, the respondent was asked if s/he had a computer in her/his home. Those who had a home computer were asked if it was connected to the Internet. The focus of the present study is to assess home Internet access across the following demographic variables. Respondents were asked to self-identify their gender (i.e., woman, man), race/ethnicity, and the year they were born. Respondent's age was determined by subtracting year born from the year in which the interview occurred and age categories were constructed following those used in previous studies.
 
    The geographic location of urban versus rural was measured using pre-coded data provided with the sample of telephone numbers. Following the U.S. Census Bureau classification, counties with populations less than 100,000 were classified as rural while counties with populations of 100,000 or more were classified as urban (2010). Household income was measured by asking respondents to select from a list of categories that best reflected the total earnings of everyone living in their household. To measure educational attainment, respondents were asked to indicate the highest degree that they had earned. Respondents' family composition was determined by whether or not there were children living in the home.

    Following Martin and Robinson (2007) we note that while our income categories do not account for inflation, the focus of the analysis is on differences between groups. Also, since some variables of interest change over time (e.g., family composition as children age and leave home) the categories we examine are considered to represent a group who share the characteristic at the time of the survey. The focus of the present study is on how differences between categories of group characteristics help explain the digital divide.

Results and Discussion

    Table 1 shows results from all six surveys for North Carolina households with home Internet access by the demographic variables of interest. For purposes of capturing the general trend in home Internet access across time the first row in Table 1 shows a change from about one of every three (36%) households in 1999 to about four out of every five (79%) households in 2011. This means that the number of households in North Carolina reporting home Internet access more than doubled in twelve years but inclusive access across the state has not been achieved. A second general observation is that for most of the variables of interest the largest percent increase occurs between 2004 and 2008. This is also the largest span of time between surveys and presents the unanswerable question of what the trend would have looked like if citizens had been surveyed in 2006, or if surveys were conducted annually.  In the following paragraphs we present the notable changes across time for the social stratification variables of interest.

    First, in Table 1, we see that there is a notable difference between women and men across all years in percent reporting home Internet access. In each survey, fewer women than men had home Internet access. This is consistent with previous studies of the gender difference in the digital divide. The change from 1999 through 2011 shows steady increases in home Internet access for both women and men. The difference is smallest in the last survey suggesting a closing gender gap. However, about one-fifth of respondents did not have home Internet access and that proportion lacking access did not substantially change across a four year period (i.e., 2008 to 2011). This finding may indicate a threshold effect for the diffusion of home Internet access. It may also be closely tied to macro-level economic trends that effect decisions at the micro-level of households about the best way to utilize their limited income resources.  

    Next, the respondents are grouped by age categories to assess differences across time and across life stages. Table 1 shows similar increases in access across three age categories that include people between the ages of 28 to 58 years old. From 2008 through 2011 the percent in these age categories reporting home Internet access stabilized and is almost universal. However, for the other two age groups (i.e., those in the youngest category and those in the oldest category) the reports of home Internet access in 2011 were lower than the reports from the previous year. For young adults (ages 18 to 27 years old) slightly over three-quarters (77%) reported home access in 2011 which was a decrease from the 88% reporting access in 2008. Note that the 2010 figure for this age group may be too high due to sampling error and/or the respondents' interpretation of access. This finding stands in contrast to almost all other trends for the variables shown in Table 1. It is possible that this decrease reflects the likelihood that this age group of respondents are likely to rely on mobile devices to access the Internet rather than a fixed line into their home. Including information about respondents' use of wireless devices is an area for future research. 

    For the oldest respondents (ages 69 years and older), we see the percent with home Internet access remained at very low levels across an eleven year period (i.e., 12% in 1999, 24% in 2002, 29% in 2004, 37% in 2008). Notably, there was a substantial increase from 37% to 62% (in 2008 and 2010 respectively) followed by a slight decline to 58% in 2011. Overall, in comparison to those in all other age groups, the results for the oldest respondents indicate a markedly lower and different pattern of access across time. This finding suggests a problematic digital divide for age groups that requires further study.

    In all waves of the survey, we see persistent differences in home Internet access across racial/ethnic groups living in North Carolina. Due to insufficient numbers we were unable to produce results for respondents who were Native American, Hispanic or in the "other" category in 1999, but this constraint was resolved in later waves of data collection. As shown in Table 1, in 1999 white respondents were more than two times as likely as were African American respondents to have home Internet access (43% and 19% respectively). The racial digital divide between whites and African Americans persists across time but there is a decrease in the difference across six years (i.e., 57% and 34% in 2002, 62% and 49% in 2004, 74% and 60% in 2008). The last two columns of results show that from 2010 to 2011 the extent of access remained about the same for whites, African Americans and those in the racial/ethnic group "other." Notably, these results show that inclusive access does not exist for any racial group and the racial digital divide remains an apparent disadvantage for African Americans with only 71% and 74% reporting home Internet access in 2010 and 2011. Consistent with other findings, the changes across time for Native Americans and Hispanics show a general increase in access. However, the results for these two groups in 2010 and 2011 suggest the need for further analysis and more data collection before recognizing a trend.

    The findings for geographic location reveal that the gap in access remained across time with respondents in urban areas being more likely than those in rural areas to have home Internet access. However, there was steady progress in obtaining home Internet access for both urban and rural areas through 2010. Results show that overall, for the period from 1999 to 2010 the change in home access increased 95% percent in urban counties (43% to 84%) and 188% in rural counties (26% to 75%). This shows that in North Carolina, the rate of growth of home Internet access was almost twice as fast in rural counties as in urban counties. This key finding suggests that targeted efforts to increase access to underserved areas have had measurable success. However, from 2010 to 2011 this progress ended and the extent of Internet access and the gap between urban and rural regions remained essentially unchanged with 16% of urban and 25% of rural respondents not having home Internet access.
 
    Results in Table 1 show two important changes across time for household income groups. First, for North Carolina households with the lowest level of income ($15,000 or less), the progress in access shown from 1999 and 2008 (9% to 49% respectively) stabilized and little change occurred over the course of the following three years (i.e., 2008 to 2011). Indicative of the tight economic circumstances of these respondents, only one-half reported having home Internet access in 2011. Second, looking down the column of income categories, it is easy to see the positive relationship between household income and having home Internet access. Beginning in 2008 and continuing into 2011, 79% to 99% of households with incomes at and above $30, 000 reported having home Internet access while those with lower household incomes lag behind. Taken together, examination of the household income groups shows that the income digital divide persists.

    Table 1 shows a dramatic educational attainment digital divide. Looking across categories reveals that as educational attainment increases the percent of respondents having home Internet access increases. As previous studies have shown this relationship mirrors those found for household income. Respondents with less than a high school education are especially disadvantaged with very few (2%) reporting access in 1999 and twelve years later only 38% had home Internet access and 62% did not. For those with high school degrees we find increases from 1999 through 2008 (30% to 72% respectively) and then a stabilizing in the last two waves. In 2011 almost three-quarters (73%) of high school graduates report home Internet access and over one-quarter  (27%) of respondents in this education category do not have access. In stark contrast, the results for respondents in the two highest categories of educational attainment show that home Internet access reached inclusiveness and remained almost universal between 2010 and 211 with over 90% reporting home Internet access.
 
    Last, the results in Table 1 show that households with children were more likely than household without children to have home Internet access. This is consistent with findings from previous studies and also indicates the increasing demand for Internet access to complete homework assignments. The change across time in percent of households with children having home Internet access increased 107% (from 43% in 1999 to 89% in 2011). This key finding suggests an important shift in the resources required for families with children. Thus we find that across time, home Internet access has stabilized at a high level for households with children living at home. Three quarters (75%) of respondents without children in the home reported having home Internet access and one-quarter (25%) did not. It is interesting to note this difference between groups by family composition is similar to that found between levels of educational attainment (i.e., those with high school degrees compared to those with college degrees) and calls for future research to investigate possible relationships.

Table 1.  North Carolina Households with Home Internet Access by Demographic Characteristics: 1999 to 2011.  Shown as Percent of Sample by Year

Conclusion

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