Broadband, Self-Employment, and Work-from-Home — Evidence from the American Community Survey

Abstract

In this study, using the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) data, I examine how broadband affects self-employment and work-from-home for married women. Based on different sources of broadband data, I investigate the impacts of broadband from both adoption and access to broadband. I find that both adoption and access to broadband positively impact self-employment and work-from-home, and the adoption to broadband has stronger effects. It suggests that as the broadband infrastructure has been widely available for recent years, how to increase the local adoption to high-speed broadband becomes a more critical question. Adoption to broadband is related to household income levels and whether there is a need for that. Therefore, for the policy implications, the stipend from the government to lower the cost of high-speed broadband adoption may be a good place-based policy, especially for low-income and less developed areas. This study contributes to the existing literature that examines how Information and Communications Technology (ICT) affects the labor market.

Keywords: Adoption to broadband, Access to broadband, Self-employment, Work-from-home, American Community Survey

JEL Classification: J21, J22, L96