Conroy & Low: Rural Broadband, Gender, and New Businesses

In Entrepreneurship, Broadband, and Gender: Evidence from Establishment Births in Rural America, Tessa Conroy (Agriculture and Applied Economics, UW-Madison) and Sarah A. Low (Regional Economics, Univ. of Missouri) analyze the impact of broadband access on new business start-ups in rural communities, with a particular emphasis on women-led business impacts.

The authors begin with an overview of rural economic decline, outlining the reality that many rural communities have struggling economies and otherwise have not rebounded at the same rate as their urban counterparts since the Great Recession. Asserting that “rural America has a great need for implementing economic development strategies,” the authors key in on the potential benefits of increased rural entrepreneurship and seek to test the relationship between rural broadband access (or lack of access) and entrepreneurial growth. The authors note that, although the importance of broadband access for entrepreneurship (measured by start-up activity) is well established and studied in urban settings, there has not been comparable work in rural environments.

Using a unique national data set that targets newly entering businesses — rather than more static measures of overall business activity — the authors find that broadband access did increase the rate of new business start-ups (what they call the “establishment birth rate”) and this effect was seen “even and especially for small, remote, and women-led businesses.”

Ultimately, this work helps establish the connection between broadband access and rates of entrepreneurism in rural places. The work particularly highlights the strength of these effects for remote rural businesses without employees and for women-led businesses. Indeed, the authors conclude that the “impact of broadband access is highest in remote rural counties, and this result is driven by women-led start-ups.”

The authors outline future research needs in this area, but they also assert that these research “results in the hands of rural decision-makers should incent broadband access and support for rural ecosystems that equitably foster entrepreneurship for diverse business leaders.”