Measuring Internet Poverty

The World Data Lab (WDL) has developed a global measurement framework of internet poverty to measure the number of people left behind in the internet revolution. People who can’t afford a basic package of connectivity—set at 1.5 gigabytes per month at a minimum download speed of 3 megabits per second (equivalent to 6 seconds to load a standard web page)—are internet-poor. WDL estimates that there are around 1.1 billion people living in internet poverty today. They found that almost anyone living in a rich country can afford to use the internet—even if the price might be rather high. By contrast, the price plays a crucial role in poor countries. At least in the short term, people in developing regions depend on an affordable pricing scheme for them to be able to access the internet. In particular, WDL's results show that poor countries with cheap internet (below $15 per month), are able to connect a much larger proportion of the population than poor countries with expensive internet. Only 13 percent of the population in poor countries with cheap internet live in internet poverty. Conversely, poor countries with expensive internet have 67 percent of their population in internet poverty. Of the 4 billion people who live in countries with an average per capita spending of below $11 per day, 3.4 billion have access to cheap internet by WDL's definition. Only 7.5 percent, around 588 million people, live in poor countries with expensive internet. This group of people must be the focus for eliminating internet poverty.

[Jesús Crespo Cuaresma is a Professor of Economics at Vienna University of Economics and Business. Homi Kharas is Senior Fellow of Global Economy and Development at the Center for Sustainable Development. Katharina Fenz is the Lead Data Scientist at World Data Lab, and Marco Fengler and Leo Saenger are Research Analysts at World Data Lab.]