Final Project: Broadwith Internet Access
Aaron Byington
5/13/2022
Intro
Since the 1970s internet’s broad width has been measured by the Census Burgh. For my final project, I was interested in measuring which counties in the United States had the broadest width spread across the US.
For my analysis of the project, I used the data set with 65k people as I didn’t find data on 2018 data. I focused on two demographics of the population- education, and employment.
Hypothesis
I argued that the county with the lowest percentage of broad width internet correlated more with not attending higher education (college and beyond) than their employment status.
Set Up
I first wanted to see an overall sense of broad-width internet data in the US with available data from 2018 through Arizona State University.
I received this data from https://techdatasociety.asu.edu/broadband-data-portal/dataaccess/countydata It’s found under “County Broadband 2000-2018”
I downloaded the data into excel and sorted the yearly data, so I only viewed 2018’s broad width. I cut all of the previous years. I then converted the decimals of each county into a percentage.
All counties were accounted for in the United States except 6 (Espiada County in Nevada, San Juan County and Blumfield County in Colorado, and Loving County, King County, and Borden County in Texas. I was able to find these remaining counties’ data sets on these websites.
Census Website: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/kingcountytexas
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/esmeraldacountynevada,kingcountytexas/PST045221
Texas’s broad width: https://broadbandnow.com/Texas
However, I was unable to match any demographics match with the data set I found, so I used Kaggle’s broad width data from 2014.
Kaggle Data: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/madaha/people-without-internet
Kaggle’s data source only accounted for counties with a population over 63,000. And was a bit older as it is from 2014. Each demographic they added (age, race, employment, and education) measured if the applied population had broad width data or not.
I then extracted this data into an excel file and plugged it into excel and used the ’find and replace option to change state abbreviations into their full names to allow Tablaue to read more clearly.
I then chose to focus on education and employment out of all the demographics.
##Map of US
The map shows every county in the United States. It gives us a good sense that the counties with the lowest amount of broad-width data are in the Southwest ands the Deep South. However, due to population density, we will use the map associated with a county with more than 65,000 people to explore trends and patterns of our data.
Map of Broadwidth Internet in US by county with at least 65k people
Explain
Of course, there is a large range of population density in each county. Please see the graphs below to visualzie the best and worst counties in providing broad width internet.
Bottom 15 Counties for Broadwidth Internet
Explain
Based on the findings Mckinney County in New Mexico has the worst internet broadwidth at the time of this study (2014). This is followed by the county to the left - Apache County. Even though both of these cities has over 65k in population both of these counties are not close to a major city. Mckinney’s population density is 13.1 people per square mile (source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/mckinleycountynewmexico) and Apache County is 6.4 people per square mile. Source: (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/apachecountyarizona,mckinleycountynewmexico/PST045221)
Top 15 Counties for Broadwidth Internet
Explain
Douglas County in Colarado had the highest broad width in the United States at 95.83%. Douglas County is nested in between the Southern suburbs of Denver down to about the midpoint to Colorado Springs, CO. This county has 426 people per square mile. Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/douglascountycolorado,kendallcountyillinois/PST045221
This is followed by Kendall County in Illinois which covers the outside suburan and rural area of Chicago. This county has 358.2 inhabitants per square mile. Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/kendallcountyillinois
Finally Hamilton County in Indiana is located outside Indianapolis where half is occuped by the suburbs and the other half is covered by rural areas. This county has 690 people per square mile. Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/hamiltoncountyindiana,douglascountycolorado,kendallcountyillinois/PST045221
These three counties surprised me as I expected all of these counties to cover major, Urban cities.
#Comparison of Mckinney County, New Mexico and Douglas County, Colorado
In Douglas County, it is no surprise that employed residents have access to broad-width data, however, those with jobs in McKinney County have 39% have access to the internet. This questions how economically well off each county is, and the types of jobs people have in these counties.
There is only a 0.1% difference for broad width internet access for those employed and unemployed.
However, in Douglas County, there is a 17.5% difference in broadwidth internet for those employed versus the unemployed.
One correlation between the two counties is that McKinney County(5,455 square miles) is a much bigger county than Douglass County (843 square miles). Based on this, perhaps McKinney County is not doing as inferior as it seems for broad width internet access for its residents.
However, employment versus education may give us more insight as to if the county has more disparity between economical classes in both counties.
In this graph, residents in Douglass County whose education is at or above college level strongly correlate to their access to broad width internet at 96.97%.
However, residents in McKinney County also share this correlation of 74.23%. That is almost double the size if you then employment status in the county.
Finally, we begin to see the difference between education levels in each county. In Douglas County, the percentage of those who did not finish high school is 77.2%m while in McKinney County, New Mexico the percentage of people who did not finish high is 12.1%. That’s only about a 19% difference for Douglas County, but a 62% difference in McKinney County, New Mexico.
Conclusion
I found it surprising that many counties with top board width internet were deep in the suburbs and rural of large cities.
My hypothesis that education played a more dominant role than employment status on broad width internet was accurate. Douglas County’s difference in employment status is only 0.1%, while it is about a 19% difference in education status. There is a substantial swing in broadwidth internet access if you finish high school or not.
In McKinney county, it goes to further. Although broad width internet access is extreme if you finish high school or not.
Further research such as the amount of college or higher graduates located in each county would be helpful. More research would help give a better picture of the policies in McKinney County towards broadwidth internet access for its residents. And in Douglass County, it would give better insight into the policies of Douglas County and how the county distributes broad width internet access to its residents.