Digital Divide: Empirical Study of CIUS 2020

Abstract

As Canada and other major countries investigate implementing "digital money" or Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), important questions need to be answered relating to the effect of demographic and geographic factors on the population's digital literacy. This paper uses the Canadian Internet Use Survey (CIUS) 2020 and survey versions of Lasso inference methods to assess the digital divide in Canada and determine the relevant factors that influence it. We find that a significant divide in the use of digital technologies, e.g., online banking and virtual wallet, continues to exist across different demographic and geographic categories. We also create a digital divide score that measures the survey respondents' digital literacy and provide multiple correspondence analyses that further corroborate these findings.