Divario digitale e trappola della povertà: evidenza dalle province italiane

Abstract

The paper uses an original dataset to analyse the distribution of broadband take-up in the Italian provinces. Although the results should be approached with caution, from the perspective of cause-and-effect interpretation, we point out the interesting fact that broadband technology take-up is highly correlated to factors of wealth, level of education and degree of concentration of the offering, even after checking the demographic and typical morphology of the provinces. The first two factors would justify the alarm voiced by those commentators who fear the emergence of a new form of social inequality, driven by easy access to the new-generation of services available through the Internet.