ICT diffusion and health outcome: Effects and transmission channels

摘要

? 2021 Elsevier LtdThis study is an attempt to assess the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) diffusion on public health outcome and investigate the mechanisms through which this causal influence operates. By utilizing China's provincial panel data from 2001 to 2016 and the China Family Panel Studies, we employ population mortality to measure the health outcome and adopt Internet penetration and mobile phone penetration as the proxy variables of ICT diffusion, respectively. Empirical results prove that ICT diffusion significantly reduces the population mortality in China. The conclusion is still reliable after conducting several robustness checks and the instrumental variable estimation. The mechanism analysis reveals that ICT diffusion improves health outcome through its effects on increasing public health care expenditure at the macro level and cultivating individual health literacy at the micro level. This study provides several policy implications for constructing “information superhighway” and conducting health intervention for developing countries in the digital era.