Does Information and Communication Technology Lead to the Well-Being of Nations? A Country-Level Empirical InvestigationKARTIK GANJU, PAUL PAVLOU, RAJIV BANKER

Introduction

Everything that we choose we choose for the sake of something else— except happiness which is an end. –Aristotle

◦ ICT been shown to increase GDP and productivity of nations

◦ However, effects of ICT can go beyond impacts on income

Impacts of ICT Social Capital and Social Equality: ICT can bring people together and give a voice to those who would otherwise not have one

Health: Health information can be provided to underserved areas via ICT

Education: Citizens can access MOOCs and other information via ICT

Commerce: Citizens can access to information about markets to get better prices

These impacts of ICT go beyond changes to GDP

Self-reported Well-being (SWB) Colloquially known as happiness

Correlated with a judgment about one’s overall life satisfaction

◦ Repeated measurements of SWB correlated across time

◦ Higher well-being correlated with lower suicide rates

◦ Correlated with biological measures (hormone levels, immune systems, cardiovascular measures)

AnalysisRESULTS

Use of ICT associated with an increase in the well-being of a country

◦ Results hold even after accounting for levels of GDP of the country

Using a biclustering approach, we find◦ Countries with low levels of ICT increase well-

being from adoption of mobile telephones◦ Countries in all layers have a positive and

significant effect of ICT on well-being

DATA SOURCES

Use Gallup World Poll for Well-being Information

Data on ICT adoption from the World Bank

Use a fixed effects model ◦ Use the slope of the terrain as an instrument for

the cost of implementation of ICT metrics

Discussion Effects of ICT go beyond impacts on Income and GDP

Important for researchers to understand the holistic impact of ICT

Different ICT systems can have different impacts on well-being based on the type of country – one size fits all approach may not work

Thank You!