Feds: One in Six U.S. Homes Cell-Only

The CDC's National Health Interview Survey finds Americans continue to ditch landlines, with one in six U.S. homes use only wireless phones.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has released preliminary figures from its National health Interview Survey from January through June 2008, and among the findings are that U.S. households are increasingly abandoning traditional landline phone service in favor of mobile phones. According to the survey results, some 17.5 percent of U.S. households—that’s just over one in six—only used wireless phones during the first half of 2008. What’s more, some 13.3 percent of U.S. households (that’s just over one in eight) received all or nearly all their calls on a mobile phone despite having a landline to the home.

The survey finds that renters and younger people are more likely to go cell-only. For instance, almost two-thirds of adults living with unrelated adult roommates use only wireless phones, and one third of adult renters used only mobile phones. In contrast, only 9 percent of homeowners are cell-only. Roughly one in three adults afters 25 to 29 years lived in households that only used mobile phones; among adults aged 18 to 24, the percentage was slightly lower, at 31 percent. However, older respondents were less likely to be cell-only, with only 2.8 percent of adults aged 65 and over reporting they only used mobile phones.

Similarly, income seems related to whether a household is cell only: some 26 percent of adults living in poverty and 22.6 of adults living near poverty lived in households with only wireless phones.

Location may also be a factor: adults in the U.S. south and midwest were more likely than adults in the west or northeast to live in wireless-only households.