Internet Use and Income Differences

[Trausti]

I'd think we'd all agree that the Internet can be a great distraction (how many of you are posting while at work ), but it appears that your ability to put off that distraction may equate to higher income.

First, we find strong evidence that income plays an important role in determining the
allocation of time to the Internet. This finding reconfirms an earlier estimate of a relationship
between income and extent of Internet use (Goldfarb and Prince, 2008), but does so using a more
expansive and detailed dataset, and for later years when broadband access is more prevalent. We
find that higher income households spend less total time online per week. Households making
$25,000-$35,000 a year spend ninety-two more minutes a week online than households making
$100,000 or more a year in income, and differences vary monotonically over intermediate
income levels. Relatedly, we also find that the amount of time on the home device only slightly
changes with increases in the number of available web sites and other devices – it slightly
declines between 2008 and 2013 – despite large increases in online activity via smartphones and
tablets over this time. Finally, the monotonic negative relationship between income and total
time suggests online attention is an inferior good, and we find that this relationship remains
stable, exhibiting a similar slope of sensitivity to income.

http://papers.nber.org/tmp/52204-w22427.pdf

By observation I find this relationship to be true, as successful people tend to have greater focus and put in more time working (early mornings, late hours, weekends, etc). And this observation has certainly colored my view of government social policy and taxation. Once, long ago when I was young and knew everything, the notion that the rich should pay more had the semblance of probity. I don't share that view now, as it seems wrong that a person who is diligent should have to pay more because another person chooses to allocate their time to other, less income productive, purposes.

 

[dismal]

Income is correlated with age, and I would suspect time on line is as well.

I wonder how well this holds up within a specific age group.

 

[bleubird]

What is this obsession with being productive all the time? Most productive countries value worker leisure time.Germany,France and,Italy are very productive and give people time to be people not workers.It is illegal to call or email employees in some countries on their time off.Just because you sit in your cubicle for 10 hours a day does not mean you are more productive.The new American slavery!

And,studies show that kids that play more do better.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This includes only browsing the Internet. Poorer people may browse more because they have less access to other entertainment options.

Including Roku and related entertainment streaming could have offered us some useful information.

 

[rousseau]

There are way, way too many factors at play here to draw the conclusion that 'not using the internet results in higher incomes'. From this evidence alone you could just as easily draw the conclusion that 'higher incomes result in less internet use'.

The conclusion that 'rich people shouldn't pay more' because they work harder is based on the premise that poor people wouldn't willingly earn higher incomes if they had the ability to, which is flat out incorrect.

The premise that rich people should pay more is based on the premise that they were almost always born into both genetic and material privilege, which is a correct, and true premise.

You might still disagree with the notion that rich people should pay more, and that's your right, but the logic in your OP doesn't hold up.

 

[ksen]

Hmm, according to your chart I should be making about -$35,000/yr.

 

[Deepak]

Hmm, according to your chart I should be making about -$35,000/yr.

Just so you know those numbers are for an entire household

Though it makes you wonder why they have the time spent axis labeled in minutes rather than hours, considering the bounds are 800 - 1000

 

[RavenSky]

Hmm, according to your chart I should be making about -$35,000/yr.

Just so you know those numbers are for an entire household

Though it makes you wonder why they have the time spent axis labeled in minutes rather than hours, considering the bounds are 800 - 1000

Because the difference between 980 minutes vs 835 minutes sounds a lot more condemning than the difference between 16 hours vs 14 hours

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

By observation I find this relationship to be true, as successful people tend to have greater focus and put in more time working (early mornings, late hours, weekends, etc). And this observation has certainly colored my view of government social policy and taxation. Once, long ago when I was young and knew everything, the notion that the rich should pay more had the semblance of probity. I don't share that view now, as it seems wrong that a person who is diligent should have to pay more because another person chooses to allocate their time to other, less income productive, purposes.

Yup, 15 minutes a day, that makes all the difference!

 

[ksen]

Hmm, according to your chart I should be making about -$35,000/yr.

Just so you know those numbers are for an entire household

Oh . . . better make that -$135,000/yr then.

 

[ronburgundy]

Besides all the alternative explanations others have pointed to, the most glaring problem is the data are only for using the internet via a stationary "home-device", and excludes mobile devices. This explains the otherwise absurd finding in the graph that internet use is supposedly lower across all income levels in 2013 than it was in 2008.

That is clearly false. This other study suggests that the total time (via all devices) spent online in 2013 would have been close to double what it was in 2008. That means that the OP data only include the kind of home computer internet use that accounts for less than half of all the time spent online. It is highly probable that the relationship for the other half of online use which is via personal mobile devices shows the exact opposite pattern, with higher income people spending more time using mobile devices.

Regardless, the data have no relevance to the OP's claim that lower income people are wasting more time being unproductive. Even if they spent more time online, maybe that is because they spend less time on vacation, at the golf course, on their non-existent boats, etc..

 

[another1]

I've always considered Twitter the poor man's snapchat. Pretty rich people photograph their nice stuff, while the poor recycle images and quotes of rich people as memes on Twitter. I'm not saying Twitter and snapchat aren't equally sluttish, but it does seem that the rich sluts hang out on snapchat, and the poor ones are on twitter.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Income is correlated with age, and I would suspect time on line is as well.

I wonder how well this holds up within a specific age group.

Good point. I'd like to see if income is simply a proxy variable.

- - - Updated - - -

Besides all the alternative explanations others have pointed to, the most glaring problem is the data are only for using the internet via a stationary "home-device", and excludes mobile devices. This explains the otherwise absurd finding in the graph that internet use is supposedly lower across all income levels in 2013 than it was in 2008.

That is clearly false. This other study suggests that the total time (via all devices) spent online in 2013 would have been close to double what it was in 2008. That means that the OP data only include the kind of home computer internet use that accounts for less than half of all the time spent online. It is highly probable that the relationship for the other half of online use which is via personal mobile devices shows the exact opposite pattern, with higher income people spending more time using mobile devices.

Regardless, the data have no relevance to the OP's claim that lower income people are wasting more time being unproductive. Even if they spent more time online, maybe that is because they spend less time on vacation, at the golf course, on their non-existent boats, etc..

Oops--file the study in the trash.

 

[lpetrich]

That's an VERY misleading sort of graph. It should have been published with the number of Internet-use hours starting at zero. That makes the differences in Internet use look much less.

As to the OP's contention that rich people are all workaholic Stakhanovites who spend all their waking ours working and who hate everything but their jobs, reality is rather different.

 

[ronburgundy]

That's an VERY misleading sort of graph. It should have been published with the number of Internet-use hours starting at zero. That makes the differences in Internet use look much less.
.

Well, compared to the highest income bracket, the "use" of the lowest income bracket was 17% higher in 2008 and 14% higher in 2013.
That isn't that small of a difference, and while scaling the graph to 0 would be ideal, some editors don't want to "waste" that much space on the page with what would be a graph that is 80% empty with all the data plotted only in the upper 20%.

The bigger problem is what I already pointed out, which is that "use" only reflects less than half of all internet use, and only the % that is done on a stationary "home device".

I wouldn't say that the difference in the graph is too small to be meaningful, just that it does not mean anything regarding total overall internet use, which itself means nothing regarding how economically productive people are with their time (the variable the OP tried to use this data to draw conclusions about).

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

That's an VERY misleading sort of graph. It should have been published with the number of Internet-use hours starting at zero. That makes the differences in Internet use look much less.
.

Well, compared to the highest income bracket, the "use" of the lowest income bracket was 17% higher in 2008 and 14% higher in 2013.
That isn't that small of a difference,

It is if you recognize that percent difference amounts to 15 to 20 minutes a day.

 

[Deepak]

and while scaling the graph to 0 would be ideal, some editors don't want to "waste" that much space on the page with what would be a graph that is 80% empty with all the data plotted only in the upper 20%.

The graph shouldn't start at zero because we wouldn't expect a value to be at or near zero, at least for the populations they want to analyze. It's deceptive in the sense that the units obscure the actual data, but starting every Y axis at zero is pedantic and can often be its own form of deception.

 

[ronburgundy]

and while scaling the graph to 0 would be ideal, some editors don't want to "waste" that much space on the page with what would be a graph that is 80% empty with all the data plotted only in the upper 20%.

The graph shouldn't start at zero because we wouldn't expect a value to be at or near zero, at least for the populations they want to analyze. It's deceptive in the sense that the units obscure the actual data, but starting every Y axis at zero is pedantic and can often be its own form of deception.

If the scale that the variables are measured on is a true ratio scale with a meaningful zero that represents the absence of the thing being measured (and that is the case with internet use and income), then starting both axis at zero merely gives more information that is often important for having an accurate sense of how far apart the different cases are on the Y variable relative to how far they are away from zero. Sure, this can be figured out by doing the math yourself, but many readers won't and they will get the impression that the differences are larger and more meaningful than they really are. Of course, showing error bars or standard deviation bars around each plotted mean would also help convey a sense of the effect size. Also, there are in fact data at or near zero on both variables, meaning individuals with near zero internet use and/or near zero income. The graph is showing only aggregated mean data points, but should also convey the variance around those means.

 

[AdamWho]

Want to be that internet usage is directly related to the drop in crime over the last 20 years?