Political Quotes

“Today, the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life can be enriched by something new: access to the Internet. But according to a 1999 Forrester Research report, only 8 percent of seniors age 65 and above have Internet access compared to 40 percent of the population under age 65. According to an unpublished Department of Commerce study, the percentage of low-income seniors with Internet access is even less: only 1.5 percent. My bill, the Internet Access for Seniors Act of 2000, will help narrow this digital divide between seniors and the rest of the population. A recent study by Stanford's Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society shows the digital divide among different demographic groups. The variables are age, education, gender, race, ethnicity, and income. It shows that by far the most important factors facilitating or inhibiting Internet access are age and education--not income, not race, not ethnicity, and not gender. According to the study's authors, these variables account for less than 5 percent of the change in the rates of Internet access and are statistically insignificant.”