Socio-Economic Determinants of the ICT Use by Older Adults

Population aging is a current demographic trend typical of most countries, including Russia. At the same time, the spread of universal access to information technology increases the number of Internet users including the elderly. Although information technology makes a positive overall impact on the social and labour activity of the elderly, the growing number of older Internet users in Russia is still relatively low. The objectives of the study are to analyze specific features of Internet use among the Russian elderly and to outline major tools of public policy aimed at increasing Internet technology availability for the elderly. The study is based on the data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey - Higher School of Economics for the period of 2009-2015. The sample comprises the elderly respondents of both genders (men aged 60+ and women aged 55+). The econometric analysis revealed that single elderly people are more likely to use Internet. Also, the findings show that a household with a PC and/or Internet increases the chance of their usage by the elderly members of the family. Yet, the findings disprove the hypothesis that a joint dwelling of the elderly with children of 10-15 years of age improves the chance of Internet use by the former.