5. Towards understanding outcomes

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While ICT penetration and use have been analyzed extensively, more research is needed to understand outcomes associated with such use. Such an effort becomes more illustrative if ICT use is combined with literacy skills. This section represents an attempt to assess such outcomes, by exploring the association between personal income and a combined measure of literacy skills and ICT use.

As in the previous section, a logistic regression model is used to estimate the odds of being a high-income earner (dependent variable), while controlling for various socio-economic characteristics. In this case, groups with different profiles of literacy skills and computer use are included in the model (see Box 4 for details regarding the delineation of the groups).

The distribution of the groups, delineated by their literacy and computer use profiles, varied by country (Chart 15). In Italy, Switzerland and the United States the largest group consisted of users with below average literacy skills and low-to- medium intensity computer use¹. In Italy this group was particularly large, accounting for over 60% of all respondents. Conversely, in Bermuda, Canada and Norway, the largest group consisted of users with average or higher literacy skills and low-to-medium intensity computer use. For all countries except Italy, respondents with strong prose literacy skills and high intensity computer use represented the third largest group. The smallest group contained individuals with high computer use but below average literacy skills.

In order to study the effect of literacy skills and computer use on income it was important to control for gender, age and other variables. Results indicate that literacy skills and computer use were strongly associated with personal income. With the exception of Italy, respondents who were in the high group for either literacy skills or computer use (Group 2 or 3) had approximately twice the odds of being top quartile income earners compared to respondents who had below average literacy skills and low-to-medium intensity computer use (Group 1). Moreover, the odds of being a top income earner effectively doubled again for respondents with both average or higher literacy skills and high computer use (Group 4) compared with Groups 2 and 3 – again with the exception of Italy. In fact, in Canada, Bermuda and Switzerland, respondents with average or higher literacy skills and high computer use had from about five to more than six times the odds of being top income earners than respondents with below average literacy and low-to-medium intensity computer use (Table 12).

Additional insights can be gained by looking at the unemployment rates among these four groups. Individuals with below average literacy skills and low-to-medium intensity computer use had a much higher unemployment rate (11.2%) than those with both average or higher literacy skills and high computer use (3.8%). Interestingly, and consistent with earlier findings on the income effect, the unemployment rate among individuals with average or higher literacy but low-to-medium intensity computer use (5.6%) exceeded that of individuals with low literacy but high computer use (4.4%).

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1. By definition, one would expect this group to be relatively large because we define low-to-medium intensity computer use as the lowest 75% of values obtained for the index score representing use of computers for task-oriented purposes