Choosing the Future

Digital information drives participation in politics, the economy, and society. Yet great disparities exist as to which communities have access to the internet. In 2017, only half of residents of formerly industrial Flint, Michigan, had broadband or satellite internet at home, while over 90 percent of those in thriving Sunnyvale, California, in Silicon Valley, were connected. More recently, Covid-19 laid bare these persistent digital divides in both urban and rural communities, illustrating that broadband use is a fundamental resource for the future of opportunity in communities. While previous studies have examined the impacts of broadband infrastructure, they have indicated little about the extent to which local populations can afford and use the technology. Moreover, there has been limited scientific evidence on how broadband adoption matters for collective benefits. Including new data on broadband subscriptions from 2000-2017, and comprehensive analysis for U.S. states, counties, metros, cities, and neighborhoods, Choosing the Future argues that broadband use in the population is a form of digital human capital that benefits communities as well as individuals. Broadband has a causal impact across all types of communities--for economic prosperity, growth, income, employment, and policy innovation. Yet there are urban neighborhoods and rural counties where as little as one-quarter of the population has a broadband subscription, even when mobile is included. As we build "smart" cities and communities, as economies and jobs continue to experience rapid change, and as more information and services migrate online, it is communities with widespread broadband use that will be best positioned for inclusive innovation, with the digital human capital to thrive.

Karen Mossberger is the Frank and June Sackton Professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University, and director of the Center on Technology, Data and Society. Her research includes digital inequality, digital government, and impacts of technology use, for individuals and communities. In other work she has examined issues in urban policy, local governance, and policy innovation. Her co-authored and edited books on technology include Digital Cities: The Internet and the Geography of Opportunity, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide, and Transforming Everything? Evaluating Broadband's Impacts Across Policy Areas (Oxford 2021). She is an elected fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration. Caroline J. Tolbert is the Lowell Battershell University Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa. Her work is driven by a theoretical and normative interest in strengthening American democracy and fostering inclusive economic growth. Her research and teaching weaves together a concern with diversity and inequality, elections and representation, technology policy and local economic development, subnational politics and policy, and data science. She is the coauthor of Accessible Elections: How the States can Help Americans Vote (Oxford, 2020). She has co-authored three books on the internet and politics/policy, including Digital Cities: The Internet and the Geography of Opportunity, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, and Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, and numerous private foundations. Scott J. LaCombe is an Assistant Professor of Government and Statistical and Data Sciences at Smith College. His research focuses on public policy and the politics of US states. He particularly focuses on the spread of public policies across US states and how these adoption decisions are structured by state political institutions. His research also focuses on using big data to answer questions about subnational governments, and he is part of several projects to collect data on tens of thousands of state policy adoptions including the State Policy Innovation and Diffusion Dataset, and he has published in Policy Studies Journal, Political Research Quarterly, and State Politics and Policy Quarterly.