The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is pleased to share an important new report, Minorities, Mobile Broadband, and the Management of Chronic Diseases, prepared by the Joint Center Media and Technology Institute and the Health Policy Institute with support from the UnitedHealth Group Foundation. This report considers the vast potential of mobile broadband technologies to help address some of the nation’s most pressing health concerns, and therefore is relevant and timely for policymakers’ consideration as the federal government implements the Affordable Care Act.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is under fire for his office's denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, with critics in the local and national press and blogs taking the mayor to task for shielding public records from public view. Underscoring this lapse in transparency is Emanuel's vow to foster "the most open, accountable and transparent government that the City of Chicago has ever seen." Cities like Boston, Phoenix, and Seattle all routinely release such information, according to reporting by the Chicago Tribune's David Kidwell, implying that they do transparency better.

This is not to suggest there has been no progress on transparency under Mayor Emanuel. Indeed, he has backed the release of large amounts of government data, including the June release of salary information for all city employees. The city's September release of city-wide crime statistics for the past decade not only helps crime-fighting agencies, but also journalists, advocates and businesses create more targeted programs to address local concerns.

Chicago, like its big city peers, just needs to decide if government transparency is a core attribute of its government. For the Emanuel Administration, releasing some data and not others does little to shed the old paradigms of closed door politics where waste, government fraud and abuse were the norm.

Read more at Huffington Post.

Continual increases in state and local taxes of mobile service, digital goods, and digital services harm the ability of low-income communities to realize the full benefits of mobile broadband and create deeply troubling consequences for minorities and the poor. Understandably, the enormous growth of the mobile broadband and applications markets makes the consumer costs of wireless service, digital goods, and digital services tempting potential tax bases for struggling state and local governments. However, more tax increases on mobile service and the purchase of digital goods and services would perpetuate a regressive tax regime. Left unchecked, this tax structure will continue to harm low-income consumers who stand to gain the most from the potential of wireless broadband to lower their cost of living while improving their prospects in healthcare, employment, and other areas.

Continual increases in state and local taxes of mobile service, digital goods, and digital services harm the ability of low-income communities to realize the full benefits of mobile broadband and create deeply troubling consequences for minorities and the poor. Understandably, the enormous growth of the mobile broadband and applications markets makes the consumer costs of wireless service, digital goods, and digital services tempting potential tax bases for struggling state and local governments. However, more tax increases on mobile service and the purchase of digital goods and services would perpetuate a regressive tax regime. Left unchecked, this tax structure will continue to harm low-income consumers who stand to gain the most from the potential of wireless broadband to lower their cost of living while improving their prospects in healthcare, employment, and other areas. Preserving this regressive tax approach would also have significant racial side effects as it would disproportionately increase taxes on minorities across the board, irrespective of household income.

An Executive Summary is also available.

This paper presents three case studies in the state of South Carolina, and the cities of Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA, with in-depth analyses of wireline and wireless access in high minority, low-income communities. The findings of the study concluded that broadband service is becoming much more ubiquitous in high minority, low-income communities, yet levels of adoption still remain relatively low. The study also concluded that race is not a significant explanatory variable for disparate broadband deployment, and despite the availability of mobile broadband in low-income, high minority areas, wireless coverage is still inconsistent within regions.

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A supplemental appendix for this publication is also available here.

As computers and the Internet become more critical to daily life and work, America will benefit greatly from expanding the reach and capacity of broadband networks. The lack of access and technical literacy for some impacts quality of life, economic development, health care, education, environmental sustainability, public safety, and civic engagement for all U.S. communities. The federal, state, and local governments, in collaboration with the private sector, must play an active role in stimulating adoption and use of advanced broadband connections.

Between December 2009 and January 2010, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies conducted a study of 2,741 respondents, oversampling African Americans and Hispanics, to understand national minority broadband adoption trends, and examine broadband adoption and use between and within minority groups. This report addresses the experiences of minority consumers of wireline and mobile broadband services and provides insights into some of the factors affecting the decisions of minorities who have adopted broadband.