Characteristics of households with ICTs in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

This report examines the availability of information and communication technologies (ICTs); in households in Latin America and the Caribbean region. It draws on household surveys from a number of countries in the region conducted over the last few years. These surveys are contained in the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); Database of Household Surveys (BADEHOG, Banco de Datos de Encuestas de Hogares);, a restricted access database. The ICTs that have been analyzed are: Radio, Television, Fixed telephone, Mobile telephone, Computer and Internet.The scope of the countries and ICTs covered is presented in Table 1-1. As can be seen,not all countries in the region are included (e.g., Argentina, Ecuador, Panama);. Nonetheless, the surveys cover over three quarters of the countries in the region and due to the inclusion of larger countries such as Brazil and Mexico, over 80% of the region's households are included. Not all of the ICTs are available for all of the countries for all of the years. Furthermore, surveys have not been carried out in all years. This limits to some extent the scope of the analysis.The surveys include household and head of household characteristics allowing ICT information to be cross-referenced with socio-economic data. Due to different classifications and variables that are specific to a country (e.g., ethnic groups);, not all of the socio-economic factors can be directly compared with other countries. However, a number of the other variables are directly comparable (e.g., gender, age, household size);.Section 2 provides an overview of the status of ICTs in households in the region. Section3 examines socio-economic factors impacting ICT availability. Section 4 provides conclusions and section 5 recommendations.