Does Broadband Access Impact Migration in America? Examining Differences between Rural and Urban Areas

Abstract

Using U.S. county-level population between 2000 and 2006 with two sets of broadband data (Cable and DSL) from the year 2000, we apply several econometric models to test whether the early existence of broadband access significantly affects migration. We find mild support for broadband access impacting net migration in urban areas. In contrast to anecdotal evidence, we find that rural counties with a single type of broadband did not experience a significant in-migration, suggesting that broadband access manynot help solve out-migration problems. Only rural counties with bothCable and DSL access saw significant in-migration relative to similar counties without broadband.