Mobile phone data and sustainable development

Using seven datasets that surveyed 113,620 women in sub-Saharan Africa between 2015 and 2016, researchers found that compared with women who did not own a mobile phone, women who owned a mobile phone had higher overall decision-making power within the household and were more likely to know where to get tested for HIV, use modern contraceptives, and be involved in decision-making processes about contraceptives; using information from 209 countries collected between 1993 and 2017, the authors also found that the diffusion of mobile phones over time was associated with decreased gender inequality as well as decreased child and maternal mortality levels, and the payoffs were largest among the least-developed countries.

Article #19-09326: “Leveraging mobile phones to attain sustainable development,” by Valentina Rotondi, Ridhi Kashyap, Luca Maria Pesando, Simone Spinelli, and Francesco C. Billari.

MEDIA CONTACT: Valentina Rotondi, University of Oxford, UNITED KINGDOM; tel: +39-3421868282; email:

[email protected]

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