Status of young people, mobility and poverty help Drive cell phone only

At the other extreme? People in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey still hold their land lines, and they have the lowest concentrations of people whose houses only use cell phones.

The study, published Wednesday, was part of an annual survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. Information from interviews has been mixed to the census data to draw a map of cell use only by the State.

Its conclusions reflect the trends of behavior of consumers who are driven by age, mobility, and in a strange twist, poverty. According to Stephen Blumberg, the researcher who conducted the study, nearly 40% of adults living in poverty only use cell phones, compared with about 21 percent of adults with higher incomes.

There seems to be many reasons for this. Cell phones have become more affordable. The barrier of owning one is lower with pay-as-you-go plans. Some countries allow subsidies for residents with low income to apply to wireless bills. And increasingly, those who can not afford the two types of phones choose their cell phone.

This is, of course, a long way since the days when mobile phones exclusively belonged to wealthy business people. In fact, the richest areas - New England, New York, California – had among the lowest concentrations of cellular households only.

Rhode Island and New Jersey were lower to 12.8% of adults and children of cellular households only. Just before was Connecticut 13.6. New York was at 17 percent and California at 18 per cent.

However, Arkansas had the highest concentration of persons in household cell only, to 35.2%. Then was Mississippi at 35.1%, Texas to 32.5%, Dakota North to 32.3% Idaho to 31.7% and Kentucky to 31.5%.

Those who were more nomadic were more likely to use cell phones only. Forty - seven per cent of tenants were wireless only, compared to 15% of the owners, said Mr. Blumberg.

Age is another important factor. Forty - four percent of the people aged 18 to 30 are users of cell only, compared to only 18% of people over 31 years, said Mr. Blumberg.

Only some of the places with the lowest concentrations of cellular households were also the oldest. According to Andrew a. Beveridge, a Professor of sociology at Queens College, in Connecticut was seventh oldest state in the country by median age in 2009, Rhode Island is the eighth and New Jersey was 11th.

"It would not surprise me if this expression"Residential phone number"is going the way of the dial telephones and lines of party," said Mr. Blumberg. "Instead of teaching a child a home phone number, the child will be taught number of Mom and dad number and number of grandmother."

California seems to be an exception to the rule. He was one of the lowest concentrations of cell phone only households, although its median age makes it the youngest sixth State, according to the 2009 census data.

James e. Katz, Director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University, said one reason could be the generous subsidies that the State gives residents with low incomes for local calls to landlines.

While some States are participating in a plan that grants apply to cellular phone service, California is not something that hides what would otherwise be the much higher rates of households cellphone only, said Dr. Katz.

Another factor seemed to be the prevalence of landlines. In 2000, Mississippi was no. 2, Puerto Rico, for the part of residents who do not have a home phone number, according to the census data. Arkansas was no. 4. In the two States, the number was less than 7 per cent of households.

Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting from New York.

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The political rise of young Iraqis is stunted by elites

In the streets, the voices of young demonstrators and journalists were muted by beatings with batons and bullets of elite units of security that answer only for a Prime Minister who officials say personally sends orders by text message.

A spring Iraq, that it is not.

In a country where demographic skew even younger than in places like the Egypt, the Tunisia and the Libya, the wave of political change in the region has laid bare a gap between the generations, here divided by old resentments fed by the dictatorship and war and a young grip for participation in the new Iraq. "The younger generation is ready to move forward." "they carry less resentment," said Rawaz M. Khoshnaw, 32, a Kurdish Member of Parliament, in a recent interview.

But the forces of youth are blunted by the same forces that have stolen Iraqi society of much for so long - violence a stagnant economy, sum zero policy and bigotry - and which prevented a new class policy emerging for Iraq a new democratic future.

Recently, a common sense of close to three dozen interviews with young Iraqis across the country is a disenchantment with the two persistent their political leaders and democracy to our time played here. "Youth is the category that is excluded in the Iraqi community," said Swash Ahmed, a 19-year-old law student in Kirkuk. "Therefore they began to unite Facebook or the Internet or through demonstrations and evenings in cafes, symposia and in universities." But they have no power. ?

Government of the Iraq unit shows increased signs of breakdown on a power-sharing agreement-backed Americans. If the Government fractures and a small majority of Shia parties, led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a former exile, control, the result would be more divisions and potentially more violence.

For young people, it would be another sign of the difficulty in obtaining a voice in the democracy of the Iraq and a counternarrative to the new great history being written elsewhere in the Middle East.

In Basrah, Salah Mahmod, 18, said politicians were "in love with power.".

"We have no democracy, and politicians have no idea what that means.".

But it is a measure of progress that these students can freely express themselves and participate in events. A small result is that the bars reopened in Baghdad after it was closed in January. "I do not want to be so negative," says Shereen Ahmed, 19, who is studying to be a teacher in the Province of Anbar. "Yes, we are witnessing a small part of the democracy now from what we see protests in Iraq.". When Saddam was here, not even an Iraqi could come out in protest because he would be killed. ?

Talal al-Zubai, 41, a legislator in the block Iraqiya - the coalition led by Ayad Allawi, who has been handpicked by the Americans as Prime Minister in 2005 and was attacked once in exile by ax-wielding assassins sent by Saddam Hussein - decided to form a block of youth of the members of the Parliament after having attended events in the region and here.

He said that six and 20 others had deprived him said their interest but feared going public because the "at the moment, they are afraid of their leaders."

Mr. Zubai, a Sunni politician who tells, with pride, the number of assassination attempts he survived - three: by car bomb, bomb and pistol - has no such fear, and he spoke openly of his disdain for the political elite in an interview in the foyer of the Iraqiya Office in Parliament.

"The problem is, that these leaders have more power that we do, said Mr. Zubai, working on his studies at a College in Baghdad." They have more money to use in the elections. They are more able to use the army and the police to consolidate their power. ?

Iraq, demographic trends that have underpinned the wave of democratic uprisings and altered the dynamics of power across the Middle East are more pronounced than in other countries. The median age of the country is 21, according to the CIA World Factbook. In Egypt, it is 24, and Tunisia, it is 30. Almost 40 percent of the population here is 14 or less, to 33% in Egypt and Libya compared and 23 per cent in Tunisia. Comparisons are similar for Bahrain and the Syria.

Recently, a group of young Iraqis who used Facebook to organize demonstrations in February to demand improved services gathered in Baghdad near a church where more than 60 Christians were killed late last year. The talk of organizers of being arrested and beaten by security forces after protests, be called homosexuals and the Baathists.

Ali Abdul Zahra, a journalist, said to see his friend beaten as the officer asked, "Are you the Facebook guy?" The agent has continued, according to Dr. Zahra: "you want freedom, huh?" I'll show you freedom. ?

Here, violence and politics is always closely - eight years after the American invasion, six years after the ratification of a Constitution and several national and local elections, all ratified by international groups as free and fair. A brutal attack recently on the seat of the local Government of Tikrit, hometown of Saddam Hussein, caused the death, including three members of the provincial Council nearly 60 people.

The stubborn insurgency creates a space for the leaders, such as Mr. Maliki to centralize power, especially on armed security, critics say. For example, Mr. Allawi said in an interview that under the agreement for sharing power to form the Government last year, it has been "agreed that the units that are attached to the Prime Minister should be disengaged." That did not place.

"There is not to share", he said. "There is no democracy."

Mr. Khoshnaw, Kurdish Parliament, said the gap between the generations of leaders in this way: the older generation which suffered by Mr. Hussein and lutté against him in exile is "defined by the resentments within themselves."

"They have difficult letting go a moment", he said.

"People are tired by the faces they saw on television for the past eight years."

Iraqi employees of the New York Times contributed reporting from Kirkuk, Basra and Anbar Provinces in Iraq.

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