Digital technologies as factor of human capital formation in Ukraine

Abstract

The paper emphasizes that today's society is largely determined by the level of development of digitaltechnologies. The ability to access the Internet provides households with additional opportunities for income growth and competitive positions in the labor market. Today, the development of social networks creates additional opportunities for social integration of each person. Therefore, we can speak about new terms and concepts of "digital homelessness" and "digital inequality", which characterize the limited opportunities of individual members of the society in accessing the World Wide Web. It is clear that digital technologies ultimately shape the quality of human capital in the country. The purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of the accessibility to the Internet on the level of income and life quality in Ukrainian households. The authors used methods of grouping, graphic, Student's t-test of comparison of averages, monographic, induction, deduction, and generalization methods in this study. The authors assessed the impact of the Internet availability on the income level of households in large cities and in rural areas. The obtained results indicate that in large cities as well as in rural areas the income level of households with access to the Internet was more than twice higher than that of households without access to the Internet. Non-randomness of these discrepancies was confirmed using the Student's t-test comparing averages. The paper estimates dependence of self-assessment by households on their income and the availability of the Internet. It turns out that the share of those who assessed their income as "enough and made savings" of households in large cities with access to the Internet equaled 10.4%, and those who did not have access to the Internet - 6.2 %. In rural areas, this ratio was equal to 12.5 % and 6.4 %, respectively. The conducted research allowed the authors to establish close connection between the level of the Internet access and the level of households' income both in large cities, and in rural areas. The authors have also confirmed that the level of the Internet access in rural areas was lower than that in large cities. Key words: human capital, households, digital technologies, household's income level, rural areas, digital inaccessibility.