An interesting perspective on the economic benefits of internet use from the government’s Champion for Digital Inclusion.
Here is an extract of key findings from the report commissioned by the champion (2009: 2):
- 10.2 million adults (21% of the UK population) have never accessed the internet.
- Households offline are missing out on savings of £560 per year from shopping and paying bills online.
- Home access to a computer and the internet can improve children’s educational performance: if the 1.6 million children who live in families which do not use the internet got online at home, it could boost their total lifetime earnings by over £10 billion.
- Unemployed people who get online could increase their chances of getting employment with an estimated lifetime benefit of over £12,000 for every person moved into employment.
- People with good ICT skills earn between 3% and 10% more than people without such skills. If the currently digitally excluded employed people got online, each of them would increase their earnings by an average of over £8,300 in their lifetime and deliver between £560 million and £1,680 million of overall economic benefit.
- If all digitally excluded adults got online and made just one digital contact each month instead of using another channel, this would save an estimated £900 million per annum.
- The total potential economic benefit from getting everyone in the UK online is in excess of £22 billion.
Read the full report at http://raceonline2012.org/sites/all/themes/raceonline/files/pwc_report.pdf