{"id":14996,"date":"2013-12-23T09:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-12-23T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/for-most-wireless-only-households-look-south-and-west\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:26:36","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:26:36","slug":"for-most-wireless-only-households-look-south-and-west","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2013\/12\/23\/for-most-wireless-only-households-look-south-and-west\/","title":{"rendered":"For most wireless-only households, look south and west"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2014\/01\/FT_13.12.19_WirelessHouseholds_640px_new.png\" width=\"641\" height=\"590\"><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The state where people most rely on their cellphones isn&#8217;t, as you might think, a busy metropolis (like New York) or a city crowded with texting college students (like Boston). It&#8217;s scenic, sparsely populated Idaho, where as of last year more than half (52.3%) of adults lived in households that had cut the landline-phone cord completely.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s according to a recent report from the CDC&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/data\/nhsr\/nhsr070.pdf\">National Center for Health Statistics<\/a>, which has tracked the rise of wireless-only households since 2003. Close behind Idaho were Mississippi, where 49.4% of adults lived in wireless-only households, and Arkansas (49% of adults). Washington, D.C. \u00a0came in fifth at 46%, just behind Utah, but New York was clustered near the bottom with several other Northeastern states, with 23.5% of adults in wireless-only households. Where you&#8217;re most likely to find a landline: New Jersey, where 78.9% of households have one (regardless of how much they use it).<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><!--more-->The patterns are similar when the analysis is expanded to include households that have a landline phone but receive most calls on cellphones. Largely rural states in the West and South have the highest shares of such &#8220;wireless-primary&#8221; households, while the lowest wireless-primary shares are clustered in the Northeast.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2013\/12\/WirelessOnly_Households2.png\"><img data-dominant-color=\"f1f1ef\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #f1f1ef;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"310\" height=\"707\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2013\/12\/WirelessOnly_Households2.png?resize=310,707 310w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 480px, (max-width: 782px) 782px, 640px\" class=\"wp-image-27420 not-transparent\" alt=\"WirelessOnly_Households2\" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2013\/12\/WirelessOnly_Households2.png\" ><\/a><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Overall, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/data\/nhis\/earlyrelease\/wireless201312.pdf\">a separate CDC report<\/a>, two in every five American homes (39.4%) had <em>only<\/em> wireless phones as of the first half of 2013. About 38% of U.S. adults (or 90 million) and 45.4% of U.S. children (33 million) lived in wireless-only households. The wireless-only share has been rising steadily ever since the CDC began asking people about their phone status: Just three years ago only 26.6% of U.S. households were wireless-only.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The wireless-only lifestyle is especially predominant among the poor and the young. According to the CDC, nearly two-thirds (65.6%) of adults ages 25-29 lived in households with only wireless phones, as did three-in-five (59.9%) 30- to 34-year-olds and a majority (54.3%) of adults ages 18-24. A majority of adults living in poverty (54.7%) lived in a wireless-only household, versus 47.5% of what the CDC calls the &#8220;near-poor&#8221; and 35.3% of non-poor adults; wireless-only households also predominate among Hispanics, renters and adults living with roommates. (Some of those categories overlap, of course.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Young adults who grew up with cellphones may never have had a landline to give up, <a href=\"http:\/\/usatoday30.usatoday.com\/tech\/news\/2011-04-20-cellphone-study.htm\">industry analysts say<\/a>, while poor people may cut the cord on a seldom-used landline phone to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2011\/04\/20\/landline-phones-poor-households_n_851802.html\">save money<\/a>.\u00a0(As Bloomberg News\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-12-18\/poor-americans-lead-shift-to-wireless-homes-abandoning-landlines.html\">notes<\/a>,\u00a0federal subsidies encourage low-cost and no-contract providers to give phones to low-income people.) As fewer people use traditional landlines, phone companies have become <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/blogs\/alltechconsidered\/2013\/11\/18\/246001725\/have-we-reached-the-end-of-the-landline\">more reluctant to maintain their traditional switched networks<\/a>; the resulting degradation of call quality, in turn, can lead even more people to switch.<\/p>\n\n<figure><a href=\"http:\/\/pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/Reports\/2013\/Cell-Internet\/Main-Findings\/Cell-Internet.aspx\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/Reports\/2013\/Cell-Internet\/Main-Findings\/~\/media\/7B670129C7CB47F8A2169430202FB8A4.jpg?w=452&amp;h=792&amp;as=1\" width=\"452\" height=\"792\"><\/a><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The CDC data are paralleled by Pew Research Center findings on <a href=\"http:\/\/pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/Reports\/2013\/Cell-Internet\/Main-Findings\/Cell-Internet.aspx\">people who use their phones to go online<\/a>. A 2013 survey found, for example, that overall 34% of those &#8220;cell internet users&#8221; go online mostly using their phones, but the &#8220;cell-mostly&#8221; share rises to 45% among the lowest-income people, 50% among people ages 18 to 29, and 60% among Hispanics.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The demographic and geographic differences between wireless-only and landline households pose a particular statistical challenge for survey researchers, who have to make sure that their samples of both groups are adequately represented and properly weighted in their analyses.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The states with the most wireless-only households tend to be largely rural and in the West or South; households in the Northeast are most likely to hang onto their landlines. 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