High Speed Internet Helps Rural Economic Growth

Recent research has suggested links between information technology and overall labor productivity improvements in labor. This growth can be expected to increase with the growth of high speed internet.
For example, the aggregate earnings of a rural Kansas area documented in the research paper—The Impact of High-Speed Internet Access on Local Economic Growth—(Peter F. Orazem, Ph.D. University of Kansas School of Business), suggested aggregate earnings grew about 1% faster per year for those zip codes with high speed internet access.
Other results of the same study were:

• Broadband caused employment to grow more slowly. However, earnings per worker rose in all counties
• Early Broadband access resulted in faster growth in number of firms
• The effect of broadband access were most obvious in earnings and firm growth in the rural sector

All of the indicators point toward high speed internet availability can help the economic situation in rural areas.