Explaining changes in the racial digital divide in the United States from 1997 to 2007

This paper explores the dissemination of access to home Internet among Whites and Blacks in the US, the inequalities observed between the groups (known as the <italic>digital divide</italic>), the trends exhibited by the two groups in the acquisition of Internet access, and the factors contributing to these disparities. The study focuses on the large and growing digital divide observed among Whites and Blacks in the period 1997--2007. Both the standard and a variant of the Blinder--Oaxaca decomposition techniques are employed to identify and quantify the factors that contribute to this gap. In all decompositions, differences in education, family income, household composition, and access to the Internet outside the home are found to be the primary factors that explain the racial digital gap.