economy
Households with internet access
Why this matters
Household internet access measures the share of homes with a broadband (high-speed) internet subscription. Today, a reliable connection is a basic tool for everyday life, not a luxury.
Without home internet, it is harder to apply for jobs, do schoolwork, see a doctor through telehealth, reach government services, or compare prices and pay bills. Gaps in access, sometimes called the digital divide, often fall hardest on lower-income households, rural areas, and older residents.
Tracking who has broadband at home shows where people can fully take part in the modern economy and where investment or affordability programs are needed. In Charlotte, the home-internet gap maps closely onto the crescent/wedge divide; local digital-inclusion efforts have worked to get devices and connections to students and lower-income households so the same neighborhoods already facing other gaps don’t fall further behind.
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- U.S. Census Bureau — Why We Ask: Computer & Internet Use census.gov
How the Census measures home internet and broadband and why it matters.
- U.S. Census Bureau — Computer and Internet Use census.gov
National findings on broadband subscription rates, including urban–rural gaps.
About the data
Calculated from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2017–2024), at the Census-tract level, with margins of error. ACS 5-year vintages overlap year to year, so the series is a rolling estimate; compare only non-overlapping periods.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.