A newly released Pew Research Center poll looks at the impact of household income on the percentage of homes with Internet connectivity. The study shows that homes with children and with annual household incomes under $50,000 have significantly lower broadband penetration than higher income homes.

FCC Jessica Rosenworcel issued a statement after the release of the poll and called this phenomenon the ‘homework gap”. There have been discussions since the 1990s about the digital divide; this survey shows that the divide is still there and that it correlates with household income.

This finding comes at a time when computers are routinely integrated into schools. Most classrooms and schools now have computers. Also, though I was unable to tie down any precise statistic, what I’ve read suggests that a majority of teachers assign homework that requires a computer. There is also a new way of teaching becoming vogue. Referred to as the ‘flipped classroom’, this teaching philosophy requires students to watch videos and other online content at home and be prepared to discuss the materials in class (as opposed to the traditional way of showing content in class).

As somebody who has been helping carriers sell into different kinds of neighborhoods for years, the statistics are not surprising to me. The Pew study shows that over 31% of households with children do not have high-speed Internet at home. This low-income group makes up about 40% of all households with school age children. This contrasts to only 8% of homes with kids who make over $50,000 that lack Internet access.

The study looked at a wide range of incomes and is one of the more complete surveys I’ve seen showing broadband penetration rates. For example, it shows that all households under $25,000 per year have a 60% penetration of broadband while households making more than $150,000 per year have a penetration of 97%.

One thing this study didn’t consider was the other digital divide, which is the urban/rural one. According to the FCC statistics, there are at least 14 million homes in the country that don’t have physical access to broadband. And as I’ve written a number of times, I think that number is too low and skewed due to the underlying statistics being self-reported by the large carriers.

The FCC is considering if it should expand its Lifeline program to include broadband coverage for low-income households. Today that fund will chop a few dollars per month off of a phone for low-income families. The Universal Service Fund spends approximately $1.5 B per year for the program.

I understand the sentiment behind this kind of assistance. But I would be surprised if a few dollars per month will make much impact on whether a household can afford to buy broadband. It’s going to take a whole lot more than $1.5 billion per year to solve the obviously large gap for student homes without broadband. And of course, such a program will do no good in those rural places where no broadband exists.

This is not going to be an easy issue to solve. To close this gap we have to find a way to get broadband into many millions more homes. But we also would need to make sure that those homes have working computers that are up to the tasks required by homework. I’ve seen numerous studies over the years that show that low-income households have an equally low penetration of home computers as they do broadband. There are many school systems today that give laptops to kids for the school year and perhaps that would at least solve half of the issue if this was more widespread. But until all kids in a school can use those laptops at home, the kids without internet access are going to fall behind those that have it.