Technological Innovation and Human Development: Empirical Evidence from the EU-27 Countries

The ICTs are an important mean to reduce the cultural isolation, the social exclusion and therefore to overcome the inequalities. This paper looks at the expansion of the new technologies and their impact on the human development. This analysis concerns the EU-27 countries. We use the indicators of the ITU both specific (access, penetration, number of PC), and related to the whole compartment of the communication (fixed telephone lines, cellular telephones); such data will be combined to others of social-economic character (income, education, human development). Then, through a cluster analysis the EU countries will be divided in homogeneous groups to their inside and heterogeneous among them. We find the persistence of a "Digital divide", a new brand of underdevelopment. Such inequalities are the results of the difficulties of access to the new technologies.