Digital Inclusion Effect on Quality of Life in Transition and Post-Transition Countries

The interconnected digital realm has already heavily embedded into our lives, so constantly growing digital inclusion creates unprecedented shifts at all levels. Despite numerous studies, there is still no firm and complete evidence of how digital inclusion (DI) enhances the quality of life (QoL), particularly for transition countries. Thus, this empirical study aims to fill this gap by comparing DI effect on QoL at the individual level across 25 countries with transition and posttransition economies. The research relies on cross-sectional data from Life in Transition Survey III, carried in 2016 by EBRD and WB. The results revealed a highly statistically significant positive relationship: on average, people who have Internet access at home are 4.7 p.p. more satisfied with their lives. Further analysis discovered a divergence of the digital inclusion effect for a different group of countries. While the DI effect was large and positive for countries that completed transition (10 p.p.) during all the analysis, there was a negative association between Internet use intensity and happiness in transition countries (-2.8 p.p.). However, the later negative effect turns into positive (4%- 7.6%) once we control for the various quality indicators of the governance.