Can broadband infrastructure construction promote equality of opportunity? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China☆

Abstract

This study considers the impact of broadband infrastructure construction on household inequality of opportunity. Based on the "circumstance-effort" framework, we estimate the inequality of opportunity index, and we utilize China's household survey data. To identify this effect, we consider the construction of "Broadband China" demonstration cities, and we apply the difference-in-differences method; thus, we observe that broadband infrastructure can promote the equality of opportunity, and with respect to a series of robustness tests (e.g., parallel trend tests and instrumental variable estimation), the conclusion is robust. Furthermore, we observed that by increasing the intergenerational mobility of education for individuals with lower parental education background and by narrowing the gender wage gap, the deployment of broadband infrastructure reduces the opportunity inequality that is occasioned by parental education background and gender.