蜜桃影视

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for 蜜桃影视 Newsletter

TOPEKA 鈥� It doesn鈥檛 take a lightning-quick internet connection to theorize income, education and geographic disparities underly Kansas鈥� digital divide.

But the nonprofit and nonpartisan Kansas Health Institute鈥檚 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鈥檛 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.

鈥淜ansans use broadband to engage with health care providers and access health-related information, so not having connectivity can create barriers to health,鈥� Cink said. 鈥淎nd we are seeing this among populations that may need health care services the most.鈥�

KHI said one in 20 or 5.8% of Kansas households didn鈥檛 have a computer, smartphone or tablet. But Kansans with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in college where eight times more likely to have a computer than Kansans who didn鈥檛 earn a high school diploma.

Of Kansans age 65 or older, one in 10 or 11.8% didn鈥檛 have a computer to access the web. KHI said one in 10 Kansas households, or 12%, lacked broadband service.

KHI developed an to provide an overview of computer ownership and broadband availability in each of the state鈥檚 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鈥檚 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 鈥渃ritically important for those communities to thrive.鈥�

To work toward closing the gap, the federal Affordable Connectivity Program operated from Dec. 31, 2021, to June 1. That program reduced the nation鈥檚 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 program to expand broadband infrastructure in Kansas.

It followed the state鈥檚 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.

鈥淏roadband drives innovation, unlocks potential and ensures everyone can participate in services essential for economic, educational and industrial growth,鈥� Kelly said.

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: [email protected].

Did you use this article in your work?

We鈥檇 love to hear how 蜜桃影视鈥檚 reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers.