The purpose of this article is to estimate the impact of Internet access on poverty for a sample of people living in contrasting regions located across rural Mexico. Using a quasi-experimental technique, our results suggest that Internet access is an additional mechanism that contributes to decreasing poverty levels. Consequently, it could assist in increasing the proportion of people living out of poverty in rural areas; however, this is not uniform across regions (higher positive effects are estimated for less developed regions). These findings highlight the prevailing regional heterogeneity in Mexico’s rural sector and suggest that governments must design better-targeted public policies that address the uneven development in Internet diffusion typical of the rural sector. These policy improvements would allow governments to maximize the potential benefits of the Internet, as this technology alone is not sufficient to break the cycle of poverty in middle-income countries like Mexico.

本文的目的是为居住在墨西哥农村地区不同地区的样本人群评估互联网接入对贫困的影响。使用准实验技术，我们的结果表明，互联网访问是有助于降低贫困水平的另一种机制。因此，它可以帮助增加农村地区摆脱贫困的人口比例；但是，这在各个地区之间并不统一（对于欠发达地区，预计会有更高的积极影响）。这些发现凸显了墨西哥农村地区普遍存在的地区异质性，并建议各国政府必须设计针对性更强的公共政策，以解决农村地区典型的互联网扩散不均衡发展问题。