Technology and the Rich-Poor Educational Gap: A Digital Footprint Approach
by Yongheng Deng, Xinfei Huang, Teng Li, and Shang-Jin Wei
Abstract: The effect of new technology on the relative educational achievement between rich and poor children could go either way ex ante. We study how the use of online teaching technology affects the education gap, using an exogenous switch from in-person to online teaching ordered by local governments in China’s Guangdong Province in 2020-2021. We propose a digital footprint approach based on smartphone usage to create variables that are otherwise hard to measure, including identifying families with children who graduate from primary school, the type of schools they go to, and family economic status based on the housing prices of their residential locations and shopping behavior. Across the 20 cities in our sample, we find the relative advantage of the children from better-to-do families rises with the duration of online teaching. Furthermore, our digital footprint approach suggests that parental behavior, including their ability to spend time with their children, are an important part of this widening gap in the educational outcome.