ABSTRACT
Proponents of the one-laptop-per-child (OLPC) programme have made no serious attempt to justify the granting of a computer to each and every child in developing countries, though this is a cornerstone of the entire project. In this chapter, I use basic economic reasoning to show that meeting the goal of the OLPC proposal causes severe resource imbalances and negative welfare effects. I use per capita income differences between rich and poor countries to define a ‘rational’ number of students per computer per country. I find that the lower the relative per capita income of a country, the less it makes sense to use the policy on non-sharing as advocated by the OLPC. It is not that there are no grounds for using more computers in the ‘production’ of education. Indeed, the substitution of these low-cost laptops for other educational inputs is exactly what should occur (up to a point) on the grounds of efficiency. However, to benefit as many students as possible, these extra computers should be spread among as many students as is technically feasible. I argue, by contrast, in favour of what is defined as a balanced pattern of sharing that reflects the level of per capita income in poor relative to rich countries. The higher the per capita income, the less need there is to rely on sharing arrangements and vice versa. Before making this case, let me provide a brief history of the OLPC.
