internet access and connectivity as a driver of poverty reduction and economic prosperity.<sup>4</sup> By showing that mobile broadband coverage can in fact reduce poverty and improve consumer welfare, this study provides important evidence on the benefits of connectivity that policy makers can consider when seeking to achieve universal internet access.

The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the data sources while section 3 presents the estimation strategy. Section 4 presents the results, and section 5 concludes.

# **2. Data**

Our analysis relies on the overlap of two data sets for Nigeria: the General Household Survey (GHS) and the geographical coverage of mobile networks. Linking the location and the chronology in these datasets allows us to determine the treatment of interest for our analysis i.e. the availability of mobile broadband at the exact household’s location.

# General Household Survey Data

Our analysis uses three waves of the General Household Survey (GHS) of Nigeria (2010/11, 2012/13, and 2015/16) which is a nationally representative longitudinal survey.<sup>5</sup> The GHS is a dedicated living standards survey which provides detailed information on households’ consumption as well as other key demographic and socio-economic indicators of their members including education, labor market outcomes and access to the internet. The GHS also includes a community survey which provides data on prices from local markets as well as on community characteristics. In the initial round of the GHS survey (2010/11) 4,916 households completed interviews. The GHS had minimum attrition as most households interviewed in wave 1 were re-interviewed in the second wave ( _N_ =4,851) and the third wave ( _N_ =4,581).<sup>6</sup> Each wave includes two visits to each household during the autumn months (post-planting) and the spring months (post-harvesting).<sup>7</sup> Some important factors such as labor market outcomes, food consumption, and expenditures were collected during both visits. Total consumption includes all food consumption and purchases (including meals outside home) as well as non-food expenditure (e.g., education, housing rents, clothing, fuel, utilities, transportation, communication, reaction and other services). Total consumption is estimated using the mean of two visits for each of the three waves of the GHS. Poverty status of households is calculated based on international poverty lines of US$1.90 and US$3.20 per day (2011 PPP) and after applying the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to adjust for both spatial and temporal inflation. Table 1 provides summary statistics of key indicators derived from the GHS survey.

> 4 Examples of such targets include: the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 9 includes Target 9c to “ _Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the internet in least developed countries by 2020_ ”); the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development 2025 targets for “Connecting the Other Half”, and; the World Bank’s Digital Economy for Africa (DE4A), which aims to ensure that all Africans have universal and affordable access to ICT by no later than 2030.

> 5 More information on the GHS including design, survey instruments, datasets and methodology can be found in this link: http://surveys.worldbank.org/lsms/programs/integrated-surveys-agriculture-ISA/nigeria

> 6 Given the panel nature of the survey, some households moved from one wave to the next and efforts were made to track these movers.

> 7 All households were visited twice regardless of whether they participated in agricultural activities.

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