by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector
December 10, 2024
TOPEKA — It doesn’t take a lightning-quick internet connection to theorize income, education and geographic disparities underly Kansas’ digital divide.
But the nonprofit and nonpartisan Kansas Health Institute’s latest research demonstrated with online county-by-county maps that broadband deficits and computer ownership gaps plaguing Kansas were intertwined with social and demographic influences.
Thirty-one percent of low-income Kansas households making less than $20,000 annually didn’t have high-speed connections, KHI said. However, 4.5% of Kansas households earning more than $75,000 were in the same predicament in terms of broadband access.
Kaci Cink, an analyst with KHI, said Kansas families able to tie into reliable broadband were able to more efficiently download, browse and stream contents of the internet. KHI said the rise of a global digital economy and the lack of high-speed communication options continued to undermine Kansans relative to employment, education and health care.
“Kansans use broadband to engage with health care providers and access health-related information, so not having connectivity can create barriers to health,” Cink said. “And we are seeing this among populations that may need health care services the most.”
KHI said one in 20 or 5.8% of Kansas households didn’t have a computer, smartphone or tablet. But Kansans with a bachelor’s degree in college where eight times more likely to have a computer than Kansans who didn’t earn a high school diploma.
Of Kansans age 65 or older, one in 10 or 11.8% didn’t have a computer to access the web. KHI said one in 10 Kansas households, or 12%, lacked broadband service.
KHI developed an interactive digital divide dashboard to provide an overview of computer ownership and broadband availability in each of the state’s 105 counties. The dashboard, based on 2022 information from the U.S. Census Bureau, provided breakdowns by age, race, ethnicity, employment, education and income.
For example, it revealed gaps among counties in terms of the percentage of households without a computer. A sample: Riley, 2.4%; Johnson, 2.8%; Sedgwick, 4.9%; Shawnee, 7.6%; as well as Jewell, 15.7%; Lincoln, 14.3%; Marshall and Neosho, 12%; Gove, 10.2%; and Wallace, 10%.
The dashboard chronicled county-by-county differences in broadband availability. The percentage without high-speed internet: Johnson, 5%; Riley, 9.5%; Sedgwick, 10.7%; Shawnee, 17.2%; as well as Lincoln, 26.2%; Gove, 24.2%; Jewell, 22.8%; Neosho, 19.6%; Marshall, 16.9%; and Wallace, 11.8%.
The challenge of responding to the state’s technological divide has been more difficult in rural communities due to insufficient infrastructure that elevated the cost of adding high-speed internet service.
Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, said delivering broadband to rural communities was “critically important for those communities to thrive.”
To work toward closing the gap, the federal Affordable Connectivity Program operated from Dec. 31, 2021, to June 1. That program reduced the nation’s internet connectivity deficit by providing 23 million households with discounts on broadband services and computer purchases. An attempt to extend the federal initiative has been introduced in Congress, but not passed.
In 2023, Gov. Laura Kelly said Kansas received $452 million that would be dedicated to the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program to expand broadband infrastructure in Kansas.
It followed the state’s 2020 commitment to provide $85 million over 10 years to the Broadband Acceleration Grant for benefit of Kansas communities, especially in economically distressed regions.
In July, Kelly said acceleration grants of $10 million were awarded to a dozen internet providers, and that investment would be paired with $12.7 million in matching funds, for benefit of 14 rural Kansas counties.
“Broadband drives innovation, unlocks potential and ensures everyone can participate in services essential for economic, educational and industrial growth,” Kelly said.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.
