National Income, Political Freedom, and Investments in R&D and Education: A Comparative Analysis of the Second Digital Divide Among 15-Year-Old Students

Josef Kuo-Hsun Ma (), Todd E. Vachon () and Simon Cheng ()
Additional contact information
Josef Kuo-Hsun Ma: National Taipei University
Todd E. Vachon: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Simon Cheng: University of Connecticut

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2019, vol. 144, issue 1, No 6, 133-166

Abstract: Abstract Digital technology has become an indispensable component in education around the world. Despite its growing importance, a gap in students’ digital skills and usage based on their socioeconomic status—known as the second digital divide—has been identified in a wide range of countries. Using data from the 2009 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, we consider two aspects of the second digital divide for 15-year-olds across 55 countries: the gaps in use of educational software at home and Internet literacy. Specifically, we ask whether national income, political freedom, and national investments in research and development (R&D) and secondary education are associated with the second digital divide. We find that national income predicts the digital divide and that national investments have differential effects depending upon a country’s income. R&D spending reduces the socioeconomic gap in educational software use only in low-income countries. Educational expenditures reduce the Internet literacy gap in high-income countries while exacerbating it in low-income ones. Additional analyses suggest that income inequality increases the digital divide, but like political freedom, the effects become non-significant when national income is considered. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for policymakers interested in reducing the digital divide.

Keywords: Second digital divide; R&D; Educational expenditures; PISA; Multilevel modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-018-2030-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:144:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-018-2030-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-018-2030-0

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().