Broadband Internet and Household Welfare in Senegal
Senegal has experienced a rapid expansion in fixed and mobile broadband internet infrastructure over the past decade. This paper examines the relationship between access to broadband internet and household welfare between 2011 and 2018 by integrati...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/924961599585278723/Broadband-Internet-and-Household-Welfare-in-Senegal http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34472 |
| Summary: | Senegal has experienced a rapid
expansion in fixed and mobile broadband internet
infrastructure over the past decade. This paper examines the
relationship between access to broadband internet and
household welfare between 2011 and 2018 by integrating the
latest two rounds of household budget surveys with data on
the location of fiber-optic transmission nodes and coverage
maps of 3G mobile technology. The results show that 3G
coverage is associated with a 14 percent increase in total
consumption and a 10 percent decline in extreme poverty.
These results are robust to controlling for household
demographics and other spatial characteristics, such as
region fixed effects, road density, nighttime lights, and
elevation above sea level, as well as for access to
complementary digital infrastructure, such as 2G coverage or
fixed broadband internet. The findings are also robust to an
instrumental variable approach that relies on distance to 3G
coverage in neighboring areas. These effects are larger
among households in urban areas and households headed by men
or younger cohorts. Although they are in the same direction,
the welfare effects of proximity to fixed broadband
infrastructure are not statistically significant. |
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