Youth, mobility and poverty help drive cellphone-only status, By Sabrina Tavernise, April 20, 2011, New York Times: “It’s not quite the stuff of bragging rights, but Arkansas and Mississippi find themselves at the top of a new state ranking: They have the highest concentrations of people in the nation who have abandoned landlines in favor of cellular phones. At the other extreme? People in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey are still holding on to their landlines, and they have the lowest concentrations of people whose homes use only cellphones. The study, released Wednesday, was part of an annual survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. Information from interviews was blended with census data to draw a map of cellular-only use by state. Its findings reflect patterns of consumer behavior that are driven by age, mobility and, in a strange twist, poverty. According to Stephen Blumberg, the researcher who conducted the study, nearly 40 percent of all adults living in poverty use only cellphones, compared with about 21 percent of adults with higher incomes…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty