The Impact of Infrastructure and Utilization to ICT on Poverty: A Case Study of Selected Middle-Income Countries

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of different aspects of ICT on poverty in selected middle-income countries. The required data for the period 2003-2013 has been extracted from official and credible sources and model is estimated using the panel data technique, The poverty headcount ratio selected as the dependent variable and ICT variables such as the infrastructure sector including fixed and mobile phone subscribers the spending on hardware and software and benefit sector including broadband Internet subscribers and the percentage of people who use the Internet, as well as, the control variables including the Gini coefficient , inflation rate, the globalization index and corruption index has selected as explanatory variables. The results show that the net effect of ICT variables has a negative effect on poverty indicator and the final effect of ICT variables depend on complementary factors. This means that educational expenditures per capita and GDP per capita accelerate the impact of ICT on poverty. Control variables including corruption index and globalization index and inflation index have a negative and significant impact and Health expenditure per capita variable and index of GINI have a positive and significant impact on poverty.