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EXPANDING OPPORTUNITIES
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Box 2.10 Digital technologies and economic opportunities: A gender
lens (continued)
the internet could actually delay necessary reforms. For
example, home-based work could help connect women
to work in environments where social norms or child care
responsibilities are a barrier to women working outside
the home. But if working outside the home continues to be
seen as unacceptable for women or if there is no availability
of affordable child care, technology could end up delaying
fundamental reforms. Addressing these underlying constraints
remains key to the gender and overall economic
agenda.
a. World Bank 2011.
b. World Bank 2014b. In Rwanda, the Land Tenure Regularization Programme demarcated and digitized 10 million plots. Households that registered their
land were more likely to invest in it, and this effect was twice as strong for female-headed households (Ali, Deininger, and Goldstein 2014).
c. Oster and Millett 2013.
d. Rendall 2010; Weiberg 2000.
e. Black and Spitz-Oener 2007; Rendall 2010; Weiberg 2000.
f. Rendall 2010; Autor and Price 2013; Black and Spitz-Oener 2007.
g. WDR 2016 team, based on STEP household surveys (World Bank, various years).
h. Cortes and others 2014.
i. La Ferrara, Chong, and Duryea 2012; Jensen and Oster 2009.
j. Seol and Santos 2015.
k. Aker and others 2014.
l. GSMA 2015.
m. Gomez (2014) shows, for developing countries, that women—unlike men—prefer using the internet in public libraries rather than in private cybercafés
because they are safer and despite poorer service.
n. WDR 2016 team calculations, based on Research ICT Africa surveys (various years).
o. Intel and Dalberg Global Development Advisors 2012.
p. Klonner and Nolen 2010.
better-paying jobs, skills need to be upgraded. Current
and future workers need to develop the lifelong cognitive,
technical, and socioemotional skills required
of a well-educated worker in the 21st century. Workers
also need to be capable of processing the everincreasing
information available on the internet.
Building these skills requires actions affecting all
relevant environments for learning: families, schools,
universities, training systems, and firms. Given the
speed of technological changes, these skills will also
require constant updating throughout the life cycle as
workers prepare for careers that last more than one
job. Digital technologies themselves can help (sector
focus 2 and chapter 5). Complementary reforms are
also needed in tax policy, social protection, and labor
market institutions to facilitate the transition of
workers from old economy jobs to new economy jobs,
and address the distributional consequences of the
digital revolution.
Notes
1. World Bank 2014c.
2. Throughout this chapter, “opportunities” refer to
people’s short- and long-term capacity to generate
income (Bussolo and Calva 2014). In addition, and
taking a wide perspective, it is also used to include
gains to consumers.
3. WDR 2016 team, based on STEP surveys (World
Bank, various years); Central Asia World Bank Skills
surveys (World Bank, various years); Survey-based
Harmonized Indicators Program (SHIP) (World
Bank, various years); Socio-Economic Database
for Latin America and the Caribbean (SEDLAC)
(CEDLAS and the World Bank); South Asia Region
MicroDatabase (SARMD) (World Bank, various
years); Europe and Central Asia Poverty (ECAPOV)
Database (various years); East Asia Pacific Poverty
(EAPPOV) Database (World Bank, various years);
the I2D2 dataset (International Income Distribution
Database) (World Bank, various years); ILO
Laborsta database (ILO, various years); and the
National Bureau of Statistics of China (various
years). Automation probabilities adapted from Frey
and Osborne (2013).
4. WDR 2016 team calculations, based on ILO Key
Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM; various
years), ILO Laborsta database (various years), World
Bank’s International Income Distribution Database
(I2D2; various years), and the National Bureau of
Statistics of China (various years). For more details,
see figure 2.15.
5. WDR 2016 team calculations, based on World Development
Indicators (World Bank, various years).