Title: A spatial bivariate copula regression analysis of youths' access to ICT resources and subjective well-being in the Middle East

Authors: Ibrahim Niankara; Ghaleb A. El Refae; Amer Qasim

Addresses: College of Business, Al Ain University, P.O. Box 112612, Abu Dhabi, UAE ' College of Business, Al Ain University, P.O. Box 112612, Abu Dhabi, UAE ' College of Business, Al Ain University, P.O. Box 112612, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Abstract: This paper evaluates the availability and impact of ICT resources on youths' subjective well-being in the Middle East. It does so by using data on youth respondents from five Middle Eastern countries, extracted from the 2018 wave of the Program for International Students' Assessment (PISA) survey. The findings reveal that except for the UAE and Qatar, respondents from the remaining three countries report below OECD level average access to ICT resources. The within region comparative analysis also highlights significant cross-country heterogeneity in ICT resource access at home. Moreover, controlling for not only cross-country spatial correlations, and factors such as: home educational resources, parental occupation status, economic and socio-cultural status, age, gender, and grade level in school; each standard deviation increase in access to ICT resources is found to raise youths' subjective well-being by 1.88% standard deviations. Hence, pointing out the value of ICT resources diffusion on welfare improvement in the region.

Keywords: copula regression; ICT resources; Middle East; spatial analysis; students well-being; Sustainable Development Goals; SDGs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEBR.2023.131786

International Journal of Economics and Business Research, 2023 Vol.26 No.1, pp.43 - 83

Received: 30 Dec 2020
Accepted: 24 Jun 2021
Published online: 03 Jul 2023 *