Does The Digital Divide Exacerbate The Household Wealth Gap?

The global information trend is unstoppable.We are in the midst of the greatestprocess of information and communication revolution in human history.More than 40%people worldwide have access to the Internet,and new Internet users are growing.Thewide application of digital technology has brought more choices and conveniences to many people's lives.Through inclusiveness,efficiency and innovation,digitaltechnology offers poor and vulnerable people opportunities that they had notpreviously been able to reach.China is also speeding up the pace ofinformationization process.Along with the Internet as the representative of the development of ICT,there is a new gap between the rich and the poor,that is,the widening digital divide.The digital divide has become a major obstacle to the healthy and steady development of China's economy,which plays an important role in expanding the family wealth gap.The digital divide is not only a technical problem,but an important issue related to the stable development of society,which has become the focus of academic research in recent years.G20high-level principles of digital benefits finance,adopted at the G20 summit,point out the importance of the digital divide.The family is the most basic unit in the Economic society,the digital divide is closely related to the family wealth level,and further aggravates the family wealth gap.So we should study the influence of the digital divide to the family wealth gap,try to bridge the digital divide,and find out the new thinking and method of our country's economic steady development theoretically.This is of great significance for building a healthy and developing information age and achieving a well-off society.This article focuses on whether the digital divide exacerbates the family wealth gap and how it affects the wealth gap between different families.Therefore,this article uses the latest survey data of the China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)in 2016.For the missing of the key variable,the number of multiple interpolation is chosen,and the sample of incomplete data and data anomaly is eliminated.This article uses three levels of variables to measure the digital divide.The first is the network access,which refers to whether the family access network.The second is the Internet frequency,which refers to the amateur Internet time.The third is Internet skills,which refer to Internet use,including learning,work,social,entertainment and business activities.Due to the excessive measurement of online skills,this article uses factor analysis to extract a key variable as the proxy variable of the Internet skill based on the KMO test.Family wealth is divided into family income,real estate wealth and financial wealth.Referring to the relevant literature,the wealth gap is defined as the difference between 90 percent and 10 percent of total wealth.In order to solve the possible endogenous problems,this paper uses the "monthly communication and postal fee" as the tool variable and uses the two-stage least squares method(2SLS)to test the accuracy of the empirical results.The results show that:first of all,in the aspect of network access,the impact of network access on family wealth disparity is mainly reflected in the income gap,real estate wealth and financial wealth gap.Secondly,in terms of the frequency of Internet surfing,the longer the leisure time online,the greater the impact on the family income gap and the financial wealth gap,and there is no significant impact on the real estate wealth gap.Finally,the Internet skills have a significant positive impact on family income gap and financial wealth gap,and have no significant impact on the wealth gap of real estate.This conclusion demonstrates that the digital divide has a significant impact on household wealth levels and further exacerbates family wealth gap.The relevant conclusions have some enlightenments to bridge the digital divide and reduce the wealth difference of family.Therefore,this paper gives the following policy recommendations:(1)Narrowing the conceptual divide.Aware of the important role of bridging the digital divide inregional and family development.(2)Bridging the funding gap.The Governmentshould increase the amount of funds,vigorously carry out public information platform,promote network education and so on.(3)Narrowing the talent gap.One is to speed up the cultivation of local talents,and secondly,to create a good environment for talents,attract and retain foreign talents.(4)Bridging the educational divide.The Government should vigorously carry out low-cost network education,reduce the threshold of education and improve the education level of the local residents.(5)Bridging the technological divide.China must speed up the development of national information industry and vigorously innovate the network information technology.