caa a22 4500 378936387 CHVBK 20180305123641.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161128e20040915xx s 000 0 eng 10.2202/1538-0645.1263 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)gruyter-10.2202/1538-0645.1263 Fairlie Robert W. 1University of California, rfairlie@cats.ucsc.edu Race and the Digital Divide [Elektronische Daten] [Robert W Fairlie] In recent years, a plethora of public and private programs in the United States have been created to close the "Digital Divide." Interestingly, however, we know very little about the underlying causes of racial differences in rates of computer and Internet access. In this paper, I use data from the Computer and Internet Use Supplement to the August 2000 Current Population Survey (CPS) to explore this question. Estimates from the CPS indicate that Mexican-Americans are roughly one-half as likely to own a computer and one-third as likely to have Internet access at home as whites. The black home computer rate is 59 percent of the white rate and the black home Internet access rate is 51 percent of the white rate. Using Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions, I find that racial differences in education, income and occupation contribute substantially to the black/white and Mexican-American/white gaps in home computer and Internet access rates. The digital divide between races, however, is not simply an "income divide" as income differences explain only 10 to 30 percent of the gaps in access to technology. I do not find evidence that price or school differences are responsible for the remaining gaps. I find some evidence, however, that language barriers may be important in explaining low rates of computer and Internet access among Mexican-Americans. ©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston j15 nationallicence race nationallicence digital divide nationallicence computers nationallicence Internet nationallicence technology nationallicence Contributions in Economic Analysis & Policy De Gruyter 3/1(2004-09-15) 3:1 2004 3 bejeap https://doi.org/10.2202/1538-0645.1263 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2202/1538-0645.1263 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Fairlie Robert W. 1University of California, rfairlie@cats.ucsc.edu NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Contributions in Economic Analysis & Policy De Gruyter 3/1(2004-09-15) 3:1 2004 3 bejeap CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-gruyter