The Economic Impact of Mobile Phone Ownership: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Tanzania

Philip; Roessler, Peter; Carroll, Flora; Myamba, Cornel; Jahari, Blandina; Kilama and Daniel; Nielson

No 2021-05, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: We study the causal impact of reducing the mobile gender gap. Leveraging one of the first large-scale experimental studies on women’s mobile phone ownership, we find that in Tanzania over thirteen months smartphones increased households’ annual consumption per capita by 20% compared to control. Consumption gains operated through women’s control and use of the smartphones. However, treatment effects were attenuated by handset turnover. By endline only 34% in the smartphone condition still possessed their handsets. This highlights the economic benefits of closing the mobile gender gap but also the tenuous nature of productive asset ownership for women in low-income households.

Keywords: finance and microfinance; climate change; anticipatory humanitarian action (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 L96 O12 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-env, nep-exp, nep-ict, nep-mfd and nep-pay
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csa:wpaper:2021-05

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