Monday, December 3, 2007

interesting stats found during research

I have found a number of interesting stats while I've been researching my final paper/thesis/rant, and part of what I'm trying to do is coalesce these different numbers into some semblance of a coherent and believable hypothesis.

Anyway, here's the interesting numbers I've found:

According to one set of stats, 30.9% of those with incomes under $50,000 a year have internet access in their homes. At the same time, 32.7% in that group said they had accessed the internet from work, home or other in the past 30 days. Obviously, those stats go well together. Their alignment suggests that people with internet access are using it.

According to another set of stats, 100% of libraries in areas with a "poverty status" above 40% have internet access, suggesting that these libraries are pushing to offer internet access to low-income areas.

But putting those numbers together suggests that for people in the "lower" income brackets (and yes, $50,000 is a pretty high income, but I'm trying to draw a corellary, tenuous though it may be), people who use computers are likely to be mainly those who have them.

So, is this huge push for library access useful?

I would like to do that poll - for low-income areas, what percentage have computers at home, what numbers access the internet at home, and what numbers access the internet from the library - also, what numbers are willing to access from the library.

All this research I am trying to put together is to answer the question of whether or not online media can serve the needs of low-income communities.

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