1 WEEK 6 P/ 2 Health Technology of the Future Aft

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy.
Boston: Addison-Wesley.

Lotka, Alfred J. 1925. Elements of Physical Biology. Baltimore,
MD: Williams & Wilkins.

Richardson, Lewis Fry. 1960. Arms and Insecurity. A
Mathematical Study of the Causes and Origins of War.
Pittsburgh, PA: Boxwood.

Troitzsch, Klaus G. 1990. Self-Organization in Social Systems.
In Computer Aided Sociological Research, eds. Johannes Gladitz
and Klaus G. Troitzsch, 353?377. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Verhulst, Pierre-Fran?ois. 1847. Deuxi?me m?moire sur la loi
d?accroissement de la population. Nouveaux m?moires de
l?Academie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles 20:
1?32.

Volterra, Vito. 1926. Variazioni e fluttuazioni del numero
d?individui in specie animali conviventi. Atti della Accademia
Nazional dei Lincei 6 (2): 31?113.

Klaus G. Troitzsch

DIGITAL DIVIDE
The digital divide has been conceived as the lack of access
to information and communication technologies among
underrepresented ethnic minorities, those of lower socioe-
conomic levels, and people living in rural locales. Several
studies have characterized these disparities along dimen-
sions of gender (Kvasny 2003), age (Loges and Jung 2001),
race (Hoffman 1999, Kvasny 2003, Payton 2001), geo-
graphical location (Sipior et al. 2004), and educational
resource characteristics (NTIA 2000, Payton 2001, Kvasny
and Payton 2005). Karen Mossberger and Caroline Tolbert
(2003) have found that African Americans are less likely to
have access to information and communication technolo-
gies and the skills to use such technologies, even when con-
trolling for other factors, such as income and education.
Similar findings have been documented for Hispanic and
Native Americans. Despite these foundations of physical
access, the digital divide concept is not limited to a binary
taxonomy of access versus nonaccess, or the typical classi-
fication of ?have? and ?have not.? In fact, the digital divide
warrants a broader definition?one that is inclusive of
social, economic, and technology-use attributes?which
can capture the notion of digital equity. This concept rests
on critical issues of how individuals can use information
provided by these technologies and what strategic skills are
desirable to prosper in the competitive environment of
today?s global information age.

WHAT IS DIGITAL EQUITY?

Digital equity raises issues of social justice and can be
defined as a trend toward equal access to information and

communication technologies among society?s citizens.
Even more, digital equity enables individuals to gain
knowledge and skills to use technological tools, computers,
and the Internet (i.e., behavioral outcomes). The National
Institute for Community Innovations reports that:

According to recent research by the National
Center for Educational Statistics, 98% of schools
and 77% of instructional rooms have computers
and are connected to the Internet. But many class-
rooms and important educational projects are not
connected, and these educators are deprived of
excellent Internet-based resources. Most impor-
tant, even though a school or classroom may be
connected, the technology may not [be] used by
students?leaving many young people technol-
ogy-illiterate, without key skills they need to suc-
ceed in today?s job market. (National Institute for
Community Innovations 2005)

Similarly, Austan Goolsbee and Jonathan Guryan
reported that California?s public schools were funded by
nearly $937 million for a program known as E-Rate (edu-
cation rate) during the 1998 to 2000 school years, of
which a substantial portion provided Internet access and
technologies. This program noticeably closed the digital
divide for Internet access between wealthy and poor
California schools. If one assesses effectiveness in terms of
access, the California E-Rate initiative has been successful.
Goolsbee and Guryan note, however, that despite this
accomplishment, Internet access did little in the way of
improving student performance; they conclude that ?the
Internet itself ? seems unlikely to be a silver bullet for
solving the problems of America?s public schools? (2006,
p. 65).

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

In its 2003 fiscal budget, the administration of President
George W. Bush reduced funding for community-based
technology-related programs and training initiatives by
$100 million, as shown in Figure 1.

Much of this funding previously supported underrep-
resented minorities, children, and rural programs. While
the digital divide is an immediate and direct effect of the
eradication of these training initiatives, the more dire con-
sequences rest in the lack of social justice produced by
such digital inequities. Evidence of these outcomes has
been documented by the National Telecommunications
and Information Administration (NTIA) report ?A
Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their
Use of the Internet? (2002). The NTIA reports that indi-
viduals benefit from being prepared with technology
skills, and 57 percent of employed Americans over the age
of twenty-five use a computer in the workplace. By 2010
jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

Digital Divide

3 6 6 I N T E R N AT I O N A L E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F T H E S O C I A L S C I E N C E S , 2 N D E D I T I O N

are expected to increase by 67 percent according to the
U.S. Department of Labor as reported in the 2002
CyberEducation Report by the American Electronics
Association. In addition, the costs associated with broad-
band access to the Internet heighten digital exclusion and
often preclude minority, low-income, rural, and undered-
ucated populations from access to the social justice associ-
ated with social, community, economic, and education
capital foundations.

Unlike other forms of communication media (e.g.,
radio, television, and printed materials), the Internet is
distinctive because of its integration among diverse com-
munication modalities, such as broadcasting, reciprocal
interaction, group discussion, person-machine interac-
tion, and reference research (DiMaggio et al. 2001). The
digital equity principle examines how Internet access is
used, and evidence supports the argument that parity is
achievable when all populations gain the knowledge and
skills to impact social inclusion?thereby stimulating
social justice. The most noteworthy form of inclusion
would necessitate equalities (therefore reducing or elimi-
nating disparities) in education, health care, and eco-
nomic and financial systems.

The digital divide or inequity issue is not limited to
the United States. According to statistics from the World
Summit on the Information Society, a comparison of
Internet access and use in eight industrialized nations

(Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the
United Kingdom, and the United States) compared to the
rest of the world indicates that: (1) In 2004 fewer than
three out of every one hundred Africans used the Internet,
compared with an average of one out of every two inhab-
itants of the industrialized countries; (2) the eight indus-
trialized countries are home to just 15 percent of the
world?s population but almost 50 percent of the world?s
total Internet users; and (3) there are more than eight
times as many Internet users in the United States than on
the entire African continent. Sundeep Sahay and
Chrisanthi Avgerou concluded that information and com-
munication technologies are key to the development of
poorer nations and offer the ?potential for turning around
uncompetitive industries and dysfunctional public
administration, and for providing unprecedented oppor-
tunities for the information-intensive social services, such
as health and education? (2002, p. 73).

S E E A L S O Cyberspace; Inequality, Political; Internet;
Property Rights; Property Rights, Intellectual

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

American Electronic Association. 2002. CyberEducation, U.S.
Education, and the High-Technology Industry: A National
and State-by-State Overview. http://www.aeanet.org/
publications/idmk_CyEd2002_brochure.asp.

Benton Foundation Press Release. 2002. Bush Abandons
National Strategy to Bridge the Digital Divide.
http://www.benton.org/press/2002/pr0211.html.

DiMaggio, Paul, Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman, and John
P. Robinson. 2001. Social Implications of the Internet.
Annual Review of Sociology 27 (1): 307?336.

Goolsbee, Austan, and Jonathan Guryan. 2006. World Wide
Wonder? Education Next 6 (1): 61?65.
http://www.educationnext.org/20061/60.html.

Hoffman, Donna L., and Thomas P. Novak. 1998. Bridging the
Racial Divide on the Internet. Science 280 (5362): 390?391.

Kvasny, Lynette. 2003. Liberation or Domination:
Understanding the Digital Divide from the Standpoint of the
?Other.? In Proceedings of the Information Resources
Management Association (IRMA) Conference, ed. Mehdi
Khosrow-Pour. Hershey, PA: Idea Group.

Kvasny, Lynette, and Fay Cobb Payton. 2005. Minorities and
the Digital Divide. In Encyclopedia of Information Science and
Technology, ed. Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, 1955?1959. Hershey,
PA: Idea Group.

Loges, William E., and Joo-Young Jung. 2001. Exploring the
Digital Divide: Internet Connectedness and Age.
Communication Research 28 (4): 536?562.

Mossberger, Karen, and Caroline Tolbert. 2003. Race, Place, and
Information Technology. Telecommunications Policy
Research Conference: Programs and Papers Archive.
http://tprc.org/papers/2003/184/raceplace4.pdf.

National Institute for Community Innovations. 2005. The
Digital Equity Toolkit. http://nici-mc2.org/de_toolkit/.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F T H E S O C I A L S C I E N C E S , 2 N D E D I T I O N 3 6 7

Figure 1

Federal tech funding
In

m
ill

io
ns

FY 2001

$140

$120

$100

$80

$60

$40

$20

$0
FY 2002 FY 2003*

*proposed

SOURCE: Adopted from www.benton.org/press/2002/pr0211.html.

Technology Opportunity Program (TOP) Dept. of Commerce

Community Technology Center (CTC) Dept. of Education

Preparing Tomorrow?s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3)
Dept. of Education

Digital Divide

National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
2000. Falling Through the Net: Toward Digital Inclusion.
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn00/contents00.html.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
2002. A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding
Their Use of the Internet. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/
ntiahome/dn/nationonline_020502.htm.

Payton, Fay Cobb. 2003. Rethinking the Digital Divide.
Communications of the ACM 46 (6): 89?91.

Sahay, Sundeep, and Chrisanthi Avgerou, eds. 2002. Letter from
the Guest Editors Sundeep Sahay and Chrisanthi Avgerou.
Special Issue: Information and Communication Technologies
in Developing Countries. Information Society 18 (2): 73?76.
http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/readers/full-text/18-
2%20Sahey.html.

Sipior, Janice C., Burke T. Ward, Linda Volonino, and Joanna Z.
Marzec. 2004. A Community Initiative that Diminished the
Digital Divide. Communications of the Association for
Information Systems 13, Art. 5 (January): 29?56.

World Summit on the Information Society. 2006. What?s the
State of ICT Access around the World.
http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/newsroom/stats/.

Fay Cobb Payton

DILEMMA, PRISONER?S
S E E Prisoner?s Dilemma.

DIOP, CHEIKH ANTA
1923?1986

Cheikh Anta Diop was the most daring African cultural-
nationalist historian, scientist, and nonapologetic
Egyptologist of the twentieth century. His scholarship on
the reclaiming of black civilization produced an immense
body of knowledge on ancient Egyptian civilization. His
argument that ancient Egypt was essentially Negroid and
that the origins of Hellenic civilization were to be found
in black Africa challenged the prevailing Eurocentric view
of the world.

The implications of Diop?s thought should be contex-
tualized within the European imperialist dictum and
black resistance movements of the time. He grew up in
Senegal when France was consolidating its colonial rule in
Africa, and he lived through the consequences of increas-
ing neocolonialism, economic reforms, and militarization
in Africa. Born in a Muslim family on December 29,
1923, in Caytu, a small village near the town of Diourbel,
Senegal, Diop attended the local Koranic school before
enrolling in a French colonial school. In 1945 his interest
in science and philosophy was consolidated when he

earned his baccalaureate in mathematics and philosophy
in Dakar, Senegal. Diop left Senegal for France in 1946.
He pursued graduate studies in France, and elected
courses in science while studying philosophy under
Gaston Bachelard (1884?1962) at the Sorbonne in Paris,
where he earned a degree in philosophy in 1948. In 1950
Diop was awarded a certificate in general chemistry and
another in applied chemistry. He studied nuclear physics
at the nuclear chemistry laboratory of the Coll?ge de
France under the supervision of Fr?d?ric Joliot-Curie
(1900?1958) and at the Institut Pierre and Marie Curie.
On January 9, 1960, Diop successfully defended his doc-
toral dissertation: ?L?Afrique noire pr?coloniale et l?unit?
culturelle de l?Afrique noire? (Precolonial Black Africa and
the Cultural Unity of Black Africa).

Back in Senegal, Diop continued his studies on
culture, history, and linguistics. He also became involved
in politics and established an opposition party, the
Rassemblement National D?mocratique (National
Democratic Rally), having earlier served as secretary-gen-
eral of the students? unit of the Rassemblement
D?mocratique Africain. Appointed assistant with teaching
duties at the Institut Fondamental d?Afrique Noire of the
University of Dakar, he became director of the university?s
radiocarbon laboratory. In 1981 Abdou Diouf, president
of Senegal from 1981 to 2000, appointed Diop professor
in the department of history. Diop passed away in Dakar
on February 7, 1986. The university and the street in
front of it were later named after him.

Diop received a number of awards, including the
prestigious African World Festival of Arts and Culture
Prize for scholars who had ?exerted the greatest influence
on African peoples in the 20th century,? which he won
jointly with W. E. B. Du Bois (1868?1963) in 1966 (a
posthumous award for Du Bois). Diop was also awarded
the Gold Medal for African scientific research and the
African Grand Prize of Merit from the National
University of Zaire in 1980.

The journal and publishing house Pr?sence Africaine,
founded by Alioune Diop (1910?1980) in 1947 in Paris,
published most of Cheikh Anta Diop?s classic works.
These two were not related, but they were both from the
Lebu ethnic group that speaks the Wolof language. Diop?s
important publications include: Nations n?gres et culture
(Negro Nations and Culture, 1955); L?unit? culturelle de
l?Afrique noire (The Cultural Unity of Black Africa,
1959); Ant?riorit? des civilisations n?gres: Mythe ou realit?
(The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality,
1967); Physique nucl?aire et chronologie absolue (Nuclear
Physics and Absolute Chronology, 1974); and Les fonde-
ments ?conomiques et culturels d?un ?tat f?d?ral d?Afrique
noire (The Economic and Cultural Foundations of a
Federated State of Black Africa, 1974). In 1981, he pub-

Dilemma, Prisoner?s

3 6 8 I N T E R N AT I O N A L E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F T H E S O C I A L S C I E N C E S , 2 N D E D I T I O N

?Bad Neighborhood? and Internet Adoption in Poor
Countries: What is behind the Persistent Digital Gap?

DIRK DOHSE AND CHENG YEE LIM

ABSTRACT The paper investigates the determinants of Internet adoption in poor countries, focusing on the role of

macro-geographic location (neighborhood). It is argued that neighboring countries are interconnected by various kinds of

spillovers, including knowledge spillovers as well as spillovers of norms and attitudes that affect individual adoption

behavior. The empirical findings support the view that Internet adoption is affected by adoption rates in neighboring coun-

tries, even when controlling for a wide range of covariates. Addressing potential endogeneity concerns using an instru-

mental variable approach moreover suggests these relationships to be causal. The findings imply that international policies

to support Internet adoption in poor countries might be more effective if they target groups of neighboring countries rather

than single countries in order to better exploit spillovers between neighboring countries.

Motivation

D igitization is rewriting the rules of international competition, bringing about manifold opportu-nities for newcomers to enter global value chains and to catch up with incumbents. This
applies not only to companies, but, in principle, also to countries. It is, however, by no means clear

whether the digital revolution will help poor countries to better integrate into the global economy

and to catch up in terms of income and wealth, or whether the rich countries will be able to sustain

or even accelerate their competitive advantage by means of digital technologies (World Bank 2016a).

The core enabling technology indispensable for reaping the fruits of the digital revolution is the

Internet. Digital capabilities and, in particular, the capability to productively use the Internet increas-

ingly determine which companies, industries, and countries create or lose value (Capello and

Nijkamp 1996a,b; Hirt and Willmot 2014). It is, therefore, of critical importance that developing

countries swiftly abridge the digital gap that separates them from developed economies. Empirical

reality looks different, however. As can be seen from Figure 1 and Table 1, the differential in Internet

usage between developed and developing countries has in fact widened from 43.1 to 47.4 percent

between 2005 and 2013.1 The rise of the digital gap2 is even more pronounced if one compares the

developed countries with Africa, the poorest continent on earth (Table 1). Hence, contrary to the rosy

picture of the Internet enabling new possibilities in communication and productivity in developing

countries, the benefits from information technologies may be widening the chasm between richer

nations and those that lack the infrastructure, skills, and resources (Norris 2001; Warf 2001). ?Access

to the Internet is deeply conditioned by where one is? (Warf 2001: 16), and there is little indication

that the importance of geography is decreasing in the digital age. The point of the ICT-inequality

Dirk Dohse is a Senior Researcher in the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Kiellinie 66, Kiel 24105, Germany.

His e-mail address is: [email?protected] Cheng Yee Lim is a graduate student in the University of Chicago, 5801

South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. Her e-mail address is: [email?protected] An earlier version of this

paper (Dohse and Lim 2016) is available as a working paper. The authors are grateful to the editor and two anonymous

referees for most helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

Submitted December 2016; revised May 2017; accepted July 2017.

VC 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Growth and Change DOI: 10.1111/grow.12220
Vol. 49 No. 1 (March 2018), pp. 241?262

nexus is well put by Rodriguez and Wilson, who argue that ?when a new technology is introduced

into a social setting where scarce resources and opportunities are distributed asymmetrically, the

greater likelihood is that those with more resources will employ them to gain additional one, includ-

ing ICTs? (Rodriguez and Wilson 2000: 11).

Moreover, access to the Internet is more multidimensional than adoption of telephones, televi-

sions, and radios in the past. The binary division of users and non-users only captures one facet of

Internet access. DiMaggio et al. (2001) define the digital divide as ?inequalities in access to the Inter-

net, extent of use, knowledge of search strategies, quality of technical connections and social support,

ability to evaluate the quality of information, and diversity of uses? (DiMaggio et al. 2001: 310).

Thus, the quality of use of the Internet will also result in a second level digital divide among users

(Hargittai 1999), reiterating concerns that the lack of digitalization may further marginalize develop-

ing countries from mainstream economic growth (Davison et al. 2000).

Although there is a rich and growing literature dealing with the determinants of Internet adoption

and the digital divide (discussed in more detail in the second section), the possibility of cross-country

interactions in the adoption process has attracted relatively little attention so far. The current paper

contributes to a better understanding of the effects of macro-geographic location (and of urban struc-

ture within countries) on Internet adoption in poor countries. Our core hypothesis is that, apart from

the usual suspects (including per capita income, education, telecommunications infrastructure, institu-

tions), the neighborhood of a country, i.e., its geographic location, has a crucial impact on the pro-

pensity of the country?s population to adopt and productively use the Internet.

The paper is structured as follows: We begin with a brief review of the pertinent literature in the

second section and develop our basic hypotheses in the third section. The fourth section presents the

FIGURE 1. INTERNET ADOPTION RATES IN DEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 2005?2013.

Source: ITU (2016), own compilation.

TABLE 1. DIGITAL GAP (IN PERCENTAGE POINTS) BETWEEN DEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES.

Year 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Gap Developed?Developing 43.1 44.1 47.1 46.7 45.5 45.4 43.6 46.8 47.4

Gap Developed?Africa 47.4 49.0 53.9 55.0 56.3 57.0 56.4 61.1 62.5

Source: ITU (2016), own compilation.

242 GROWTH AND CHANGE, MARCH 2018

data and introduces our empirical strategy. The fifth section presents and discusses the empirical

results. The sixth section concludes and provides an outlook for policy and for future research.

Literature Review
The existing literature on Internet diffusion has established three main channels?economic,

demographic, and institutional?to attain widespread Internet diffusion. Unsurprisingly, economic

variables, such as GDP per capita and telecommunication infrastructure, have been found to be key

determinants of Internet diffusion in numerous studies (see, e.g., Andres et al. 2010; Beilock and

Dimitrova 2003; Crenshaw and Robison 2006 Warf 2009; Wunnava and Leiter 2009). Hargittai

(1999) is one of the first econometric studies analyzing the spread of the Internet across countries.

She uses a sample of OECD countries for the period 1994?1997 and finds that even among OECD

countries that have similar levels of social and economic development, differences in GDP per capita

matter when it comes to predicting diffusion rates. Other important determinants of Internet diffusion

identified by Hargittai include telephone density and telecommunications policy. Kiiski and Pohjola

(2002) examined the determinants of Internet hosts per 1,000 inhabitants in 60 OCED and develop-

ing countries for the years 1995?2000 and found income per capita, telephone access costs and years

of schooling to be significant determinants. Beilock and Dimitrova (2003) extend the focus of

research on a large sample of 105 countries,3 including economies with vastly different socioeco-

nomic levels of development. Their results confirm that income per capita is, by far, the most impor-

tant determinant of Internet usage rates. Other factors found to be important include telephone

infrastructure and the political and economic openness of a country. Chinn and Fairlie (2007) ana-

lyzed the determinants of Internet penetration in a large cross section of countries and tried to decom-

pose their relative importance. They examined a panel of 161 countries over the 1999?2001 period

and found that the largest contributing factor to the Internet diffusion is per capita income, followed

by per capita telephone lines. In a follow-up study, focusing on differences between developing and

developed countries, Chinn and Fairlie (2010) found that the main factors responsible for low Inter-

net penetration rates in developing countries are disparities in per capita income, telephone density,

legal quality, and human capital.4

Other economic variables that have been investigated in different comparative studies include edu-

cational attainment, trade openness, and telecommunication regulatory policies. Mixed conclusions

have been found for these three variables, depending on the data used to measure them and on the

empirical specification. Crenshaw and Robison (2006) investigated the main factors contributing to

the change in the number of Internet hosts for 80 countries in the 1995?2000 period. One of their

main findings is that a country?s openness and its participation in global networks have a positive

impact on Internet development, whereas countries that remain ?isolates? in the global system are at

a large disadvantage. Low levels or the lack of education are expected to hinder the accessibility and

diffusion of the technology. In Kiiski and Pohjola?s (2002) study of Internet diffusion in developing

and OECD countries, average years of schooling significantly affected Internet diffusion positively,

but telecom competition was found to be insignificant. Caselli and Coleman?s (2001) study of com-

puter diffusion found evidence that the attainment of secondary education and imports per worker

strongly increases computer diffusion. More recent work by Cruz-Jesus, Oliveira, and Bacao (2012),

Cruz-Jesus et al. (2016), and Tengtrakul and Peha (2013) confirms the importance of school educa-

tion for ICT adoption. Conversely, Chinn and Fairlie (2007) found no significant relationship

between education and Internet diffusion, but highlighted the importance of telecommunication regu-

latory policy as a determinant of Internet diffusion.

?BAD NEIGHBORHOOD? AND INTERNET ADOPTION 243

Besides economic factors, a number of studies also investigated the importance of institutions in

crafting and enforcing policies in ICTs advancement. Wallsten (2005) used a 45-country data set

from 2001 and found that stricter regulation of Internet service providers has a negative impact on

Internet usage. Andonova (2006) analyzed a cross-section of developed and developing countries for

a single year (2001). She used three different measures of institutional quality, namely political

rights, civil liberties, and political constraints, and their resultant effects on investment climate to

explain differences in mobile phone and Internet usage, and found a positive relationship between

institutional environment, infrastructural development, and Internet usage. Choucri, Madnick, and

Ferwerda (2014) identified cybersecurity as an increasingly important institutional parameter for ICT

development. Furthermore, countries with higher political freedom and better human and property

rights protection tend to have higher Internet adoption rates (Crenshaw and Robison 2006; Warf

2009).

Demographic controls were also included in several studies of Internet diffusion since certain

demographic characteristics are expected to push Internet adoption. Countries with greater urbaniza-

tion and a younger population are expected to adopt the Internet more readily. Studies by Chinn and

Fairlie (2007), Goldfarb