The Internet and Sustainable Development: Communication Dissemination and the Digital Divide

Abstract

This paper analyzes the state of Internet penetration across the developing world. We examine a variety of socioeconomic, human capital, and media and technology-related measures as they relate to Internet adoption. Results demonstrate that the Internet is not only dependent on economic variables such as spendable income, costs and poverty, but also education, literacy, share of urban population; population growth, and old and new telecommunication measures such as telephone subscriptions, broadband subscriptions and related costs, computer and mobile phone ownership, number of telecommunication secured lines and bits generated, trade matters such as communication services exports, and political environment issues such as political and democratic openness, economic freedom, and freedom of the press. Contrary to earlier research,gdpand English language are not statistically significant variables. Our findings on telecommunication industry competition and literacy run contrary to many earlier studies that find these variables to be unrelated to the Internet.