IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceco/v44y2013icp126-139.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does access to information technology make people happier? Insights from well-being surveys from around the world

Author

Listed:
  • Graham, Carol
  • Nikolova, Milena

Abstract

We explore the relationship between access to cell phones, TV, and the internet and subjective well-being worldwide, using pooled cross-sectional data from the Gallup World Poll for 2009–2011. We find that technology access is positive for well-being in general, but with diminishing marginal returns for those who already have much access. Moreover, we find signs of increased stress and anger among cohorts for whom access to the technologies is new. We also explore whether increased financial inclusion – through cell phones and mobile banking – has additional effects on well-being in Sub-Saharan Africa. We show that well-being levels are higher in the countries with higher levels of access to mobile banking, but so are stress and anger. Our findings are in line with earlier research, which shows that while development raises aggregate levels of well-being in the long run, high levels of frustration often accompany the process.

Suggested Citation

  • Graham, Carol & Nikolova, Milena, 2013. "Does access to information technology make people happier? Insights from well-being surveys from around the world," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 126-139.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:44:y:2013:i:c:p:126-139
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2013.02.025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053535713000449
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socec.2013.02.025?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kavetsos, Georgios & Koutroumpis, Pantelis, 2011. "Technological affluence and subjective well-being," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 742-753.
    2. Hirschman, Albert O., 1973. "The changing tolerance for income inequality in the course of economic development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 1(12), pages 29-36, December.
    3. Benesch Christine & Frey Bruno S. & Stutzer Alois, 2010. "TV Channels, Self-Control and Happiness," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-35, September.
    4. Jenny C. Aker & Isaac M. Mbiti, 2010. "Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 207-232, Summer.
    5. Frey, Bruno S. & Benesch, Christine & Stutzer, Alois, 2007. "Does watching TV make us happy?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 283-313, June.
    6. Muto, Megumi & Yamano, Takashi, 2009. "The Impact of Mobile Phone Coverage Expansion on Market Participation: Panel Data Evidence from Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 1887-1896, December.
    7. Isaac Mbiti & David N. Weil, 2015. "Mobile Banking: The Impact of M-Pesa in Kenya," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume III: Modernization and Development, pages 247-293, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Carol Graham, 2005. "Insights on Development from the Economics of Happiness," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 20(2), pages 201-231.
    9. Dolan, Paul & Metcalfe, Robert, 2012. "The relationship between innovation and subjective wellbeing," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(8), pages 1489-1498.
    10. Choi, Changkyu & Hoon Yi, Myung, 2009. "The effect of the Internet on economic growth: Evidence from cross-country panel data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 39-41, October.
    11. Dolan, Paul & Kavetsos, Georgios, 2012. "Happy talk: mode of administration effects on subjective well-being," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 45273, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Knight, John & Gunatilaka, Ramani, 2010. "Great Expectations? The Subjective Well-being of Rural-Urban Migrants in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 113-124, January.
    13. Lars-Hendrik Roller & Leonard Waverman, 2001. "Telecommunications Infrastructure and Economic Development: A Simultaneous Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 909-923, September.
    14. Albert O. Hirschman & Michael Rothschild, 1973. "The Changing Tolerance for Income Inequality in the Course of Economic DevelopmentWith A Mathematical Appendix," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 87(4), pages 544-566.
    15. C. Graham & S. Pettinato, 2002. "Frustrated Achievers: Winners, Losers and Subjective Well-Being in New Market Economies," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(4), pages 100-140.
    16. Nina Czernich & Oliver Falck & Tobias Kretschmer & Ludger Woessmann, 2011. "Broadband Infrastructure and Economic Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(552), pages 505-532, May.
    17. Robert E. Litan & Alice M. Rivlin, 2001. "Projecting the Economic Impact of the Internet," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 313-317, May.
    18. Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Klapper, Leora, 2012. "Measuring financial inclusion : the Global Findex Database," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6025, The World Bank.
    19. Enock Yonazi & Tim Kelly & Naomi Halewood & Colin Blackman, 2012. "The Transformational Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Africa," World Bank Publications - Reports 26791, The World Bank Group.
    20. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    21. Koutroumpis, Pantelis, 2009. "The economic impact of broadband on growth: A simultaneous approach," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 471-485, October.
    22. Daniel Kahneman & Alan B. Krueger, 2006. "Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 3-24, Winter.
    23. Labonne, Julien & Chase, Robert S., 2009. "The power of information : the impact of mobile phones on farmers'welfare in the Philippines," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4996, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Abdulqadir, Idris A. & Asongu, Simplice A., 2022. "The asymmetric effect of internet access on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 44-61.
    2. Tang, Chang & Xu, Yuanyuan & Hao, Yu & Wu, Haitao & Xue, Yan, 2021. "What is the role of telecommunications infrastructure construction in green technology innovation? A firm-level analysis for China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    3. Abdulqadir, Idris & Asongu, Simplice, 2021. "The asymmetric effect of internet access on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa: Insight from a dynamic panel threshold regression," MPRA Paper 109904, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Senik, Claudia, 2009. "Direct evidence on income comparisons and their welfare effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 408-424, October.
    5. Peng Wang & Jay Pan & Zhehui Luo, 2015. "The Impact of Income Inequality on Individual Happiness: Evidence from China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 121(2), pages 413-435, April.
    6. Bertschek, Irene & Niebel, Thomas, 2016. "Mobile and more productive? Firm-level evidence on the productivity effects of mobile internet use," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 888-898.
    7. Jean-Philippe Berrou & François Combarnous & Thomas Eekhout, 2017. "Les TIC : une réponse au défi du développement des micro et petites entreprises informelles en Afrique sub-saharienne ?," Working Papers hal-02148324, HAL.
    8. Graham, Carol & Nikolova, Milena, 2015. "Bentham or Aristotle in the Development Process? An Empirical Investigation of Capabilities and Subjective Well-Being," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 163-179.
    9. Castellacci, Fulvio & Tveito, Vegard, 2018. "Internet use and well-being: A survey and a theoretical framework," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 308-325.
    10. Niebel, Thomas, 2018. "ICT and economic growth – Comparing developing, emerging and developed countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 197-211.
    11. Joël Cariolle & Maelan Le Goff & Olicier Santoni, 2019. "Digital vulnerability and performance of firms in developing countries," Working papers 709, Banque de France.
    12. Akay, Alpaslan & Bargain, Olivier & Zimmermann, Klaus F., 2012. "Relative concerns of rural-to-urban migrants in China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 421-441.
    13. Byela Tibesigwa & Martine Visser & Brennan Hodkinson, 2016. "Effects of Objective and Subjective Income Comparisons on Subjective Wellbeing," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(1), pages 361-389, August.
    14. Leonardo Becchetti & Alessandra Pelloni, 2013. "What are we learning from the life satisfaction literature?," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 60(2), pages 113-155, June.
    15. Knight, John & Gunatilaka, Ramani, 2022. "Income inequality and happiness: Which inequalities matter in China?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    16. John Knight & Ramani Gunatilaka, 2020. "Income inequality and happiness: perceived or actual, widely or narrowly defined, fair or unfair, self- or community-centred inequality?," Economics Series Working Papers 922, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    17. Koutroumpis, Pantelis & Leiponen, Aija, 2016. "Crowdsourcing mobile coverage," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 532-544.
    18. Kavetsos, Georgios & Koutroumpis, Pantelis, 2011. "Technological affluence and subjective well-being," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 742-753.
    19. Vu, Khuong M., 2019. "The internet-growth link: An examination of studies with conflicting results and new evidence on the network effect," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(5), pages 474-483.
    20. Koutroumpis, Pantelis, 2019. "The economic impact of broadband: Evidence from OECD countries," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Subjective well-being; Technology access; Financial inclusion; Cell phones; Internet;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H00 - Public Economics - - General - - - General
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:44:y:2013:i:c:p:126-139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620175 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.