HL extension: Global well-being practice questions.

A regulator reports that 96 per cent of households in the country are covered by a mobile broadband network, yet only 41 per cent of adults used the internet in 2024. Which dimension of digital inequality does the distance between the two figures point to?

• Affordability and digital skills rather than network reach
• Coverage, because the signal does not physically reach the households
• Latency, because connections are too slow for the services people want
• Interoperability, because devices from different vendors cannot connect

Answer: Affordability and digital skills rather than network reach

Coverage measures where a signal exists; use measures whether a household can pay for a device and a bundle and knows what to do with them. Treating the divide as a coverage problem is the standard error, because it makes every remaining barrier invisible to the people funding the network.

Nigeria has required mobile subscribers to link their SIM cards to a National Identity Number since December 2020, and unlinked lines were barred from service. Which group is most likely to lose access to a phone line as a result?

• Subscribers who pay for calls in advance rather than by contract
• People without birth registration or a national identity card
• Subscribers who own more than one handset at the same time
• People living in districts covered by only a single operator

Answer: People without birth registration or a national identity card

An identity requirement imports an existing exclusion — absence from civil registration — into the digital system, so the people already hardest to reach lose the connection as well. Identification infrastructure works as an instrument of inclusion and of exclusion at the same time.

When schools closed in 2020, several education systems that moved lessons online, including states in India, also broadcast the same lessons on television and radio. Which barrier does adding those channels address?

• The shortage of trained teachers available to record the lessons
• The cost of the electricity used by households during the day
• Households without a smartphone or a home data connection
• The reluctance of parents to supervise school work at home

Answer: Households without a smartphone or a home data connection

Broadcast reaches receivers that households already own and needs no data bundle, which is why it returned to education policy in 2020; what it cannot deliver is interaction, feedback or assessment. Choosing a delivery channel is choosing which part of the population is served.

Zenzeleni is a community-owned network in Mankosi, South Africa, which has sold internet access since 2012 at prices set by a village co-operative rather than by a national operator. Which barrier does that ownership model address most directly?

• The complete absence of any mobile signal in the district
• The shortage of online content available in local languages
• The reliability of the mains electricity supply to homes
• The price of data, set nationally rather than locally

Answer: The price of data, set nationally rather than locally

Community ownership changes who sets the tariff, so it acts on affordability rather than on coverage, and the network still depends on backhaul, power and skills it does not control. Interventions are judged by which dimension of inequality they actually move.

Two students own the same laptop and have the same home connection. One uses it mainly for streaming, the other for coursework, coding tutorials and scholarship applications. Researchers describe the resulting difference as

• an access divide created by unequal quality of network infrastructure
• a first-level divide, because physical access still differs between them
• a coverage gap between urban and rural telephone exchange areas
• a divide in use that turns into a divide in outcomes

Answer: a divide in use that turns into a divide in outcomes

Once devices and connections are equal, differences in what people do online reproduce advantage that already existed, which is why researchers separate access, use and outcomes. Equipment schemes that stop at the first level typically leave the third untouched.

Japan has subsidised the development of nursing-care equipment since 2013, in a country where more than a quarter of residents are aged 65 and over. Which implication for care workers is most commonly identified in evaluations of transfer-assist devices?

• Their pay is set automatically by the company that manufactures the device
• They become legally responsible for any injury that the device causes
• The role shifts from lifting towards setting up and supervising equipment
• They no longer need training in the residents' medical conditions

Answer: The role shifts from lifting towards setting up and supervising equipment

Assistive equipment removes a physical task rather than the occupation, so the work is recomposed around preparation, monitoring and exception handling. Reading automation as replacement hides the retraining and staffing costs that actually follow.