ICT and Education: Evidence from Student Home Addresses

Abstract

Governments are making it a priority to upgrade information and communication technologies (ICT) with the aim to increase available internet connection speeds. This paper presents a new empirical strategy to estimate the causal effects of these policies, and applies it to the questions of whether and how ICT upgrades affect educational attainment. We draw on a rich collection of microdata that allows us to link administrative test score records for the population of English primary and secondary school students to the available ICT at their home addresses. To base estimations on exogenous variation in ICT, we notice that the boundaries of usually invisible telephone exchange station catchment areas give rise to substantial and essentially randomly placed jumps in the available ICT across neighboring residences. Using this design across more than 20,000 boundaries in England, we find that even large changes in available broadband connection speeds have a precisely estimated zero effect on educational attainment. Guided by a simple model we then bring to bear additional microdata on student time and internet use to quantify the potentially opposing mechanisms underlying the zero reduced form effect. While jumps in the available ICT appear to increase student consumption of online content, we find no significant effects on student time spent studying online or offline, or on their learning productivity.

Do children benefit from internet access? Experimental evidence from Peru

“…7 Vigdor et al (2014) exploit local variations in broadband internet penetration in North Carolina to show that children who live in areas that receive additional internet providers experience a modest but significant decline in mathematics test scores (and insignificant decline in reading). Lastly, Faber et al (2016) exploit differences in broadband connection speeds across neighboring residences in England and find no significant impacts on test scores or time spent studying. However, to our knowledge, no previous study has separately identified the added effect of home internet access in an experimental setting.…”

“…Brazil's Plano Nacional de Banda Larga. 3 SeeFairlie and Robinson (2013) andVigdor et al (2014) for evidence from the United States, andFaber et al (2016) for evidence from the United Kingdom. We discuss the findings from these studies in detail shortly.4 The XO laptops were developed by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program with an emphasis on self-empowered learning and with specialized software intended to encourage such learning.…”

Do Children Benefit from Internet Access? Experimental Evidence from Peru

“…6 Vigdor et al (2014) exploit local variations in broadband internet penetration in North Carolina to show that children who live in areas that receive additional internet providers experience a modest but significant decline in mathematics test scores (and insignificant decline in reading). Lastly, Faber et al (2016) exploit differences in broadband connection speeds across neighboring residences in England and find no significant impacts on test scores or time spent studying. However, to our knowledge, no previous study has separately identified the added effect of home internet access in an experimental setting.…”

“…Brazil's Plano Nacional de Banda Larga. 2 SeeFairlie and Robinson (2013) andVigdor et al (2014) for evidence from the United States, andFaber et al (2016) for evidence from the United Kingdom. We discuss the findings from these studies in detail shortly.…”

Do Children Benefit from Internet Access?: Experimental Evidence from a Developing Country

“…Brazil's Plano Nacional de Banda Larga. 3 See Fairlie and Robinson (2013) and Vigdor et al (2014) for evidence from the United States, and Faber et al (2016) for evidence from the United Kingdom. We discuss the findings from these studies in detail shortly.…”