One reason so many more people have on-line access at work and school than at home is that computers and on-line services are expensive. Households in lower income brackets often can't afford the computers, connect-time charges and subscription fees provided by businesses and higher income households. Various data indicate that personal computer ownership is tied to household income. The 1989 census data reported that 45.6 percent of households with an annual income of $75,000 or more owned computers, but only 4.8 percent of households with an income of $15,000 or less owned them (1991, 2).
Market Research studies conducted by the Software Publishers Association (SPA) and Macmillan Publishing in 1994 came to the same conclusions. Half of all computer owning households in the United States had incomes of $50,000 or more and a quarter had incomes of $75,000 or more (SPA Completes 1994, 17; Schwabach 1995, G1). By comparison, only 10 percent of total households had incomes of $75,000 or more (SPA Completes 1994, 17). These figures hold steady even though personal computers have been getting gradually cheaper over the years (SPA Completes 1994, 17). Even now a "low-end" computer with the appropriate fixtures for getting on-line still costs upwards of $1000 (Kainz 1994a, 1; Hawkins 1994, 117), the same price as 10 years' worth of daily newspapers at 25 cents each.
Households with higher incomes tend to own modems and subscribe to commercial on-line services as well (Vittore 1994, 36). This is consistent with the fact that higher income households are more likely to have access to the Internet and commercial on-line services. The SPA study reported that households in the $75,000-and-over income range "were most likely to use telecommunications software and on-line information services" (SPA Completes 1994, 17). The World Wide Web survey reported that 42 percent of WWW users had incomes between $35,000 and $75,000 but only 13 percent had incomes of $15,000 and under (Pitkow and Recker 1994).
The relative affluence of its customer base bodes well for suppliers, marketers and advertisers of personal computers, peripherals and on-line services (Brown 1994, 25; Kehoe 1994, 9; Taylor 1994, 67). It is interesting to note that neither the SPA nor the Macmillan Publishing studies mentioned computer ownership of lower-income households. The equipment to get them wired is, for the time being, priced out of reach.