Does Internet use alleviate the relative poverty of Chinese rural residents? A case from China

In the era of networking and information technology, ongoing advancement of the new business pattern "Internet+ " has enabled the Internet to permeate all facets of rural residents' production and life, with profound effects on their daily choices. Can the Internet continue to help people get out of poverty by making rural households less poor? To test the consequences of the Internet usage on farming people’s relative poverty as well as its internal mechanisms of action, we use data from the China Family Panel Studies in 2016 and 2018, employing the model of probit as well as the mediation impact theories. The results are as follows: (1) In terms of comparison to farmers who refrain from using the Internet, farmers who do use the Internet have lower levels of objective and subjective relative poverty. Regarding the marginal effects, each extra Internet use metric, a farmer’s likelihood of falling into objective and subjective relative poverty is reduced by 3.84% and 2.67%, respectively. (2) Farmers' use of the Internet concerning their business activities has the most prominent effect on their relative poverty alleviation. (3) The poverty alleviation effect of the Internet varies by region, gender, and age. (4) Human capital, social capital, and non-agricultural employment help alleviate the relative poverty of farm households using the Internet. According to these results, the Communist Party of China may be able to minimize relative rural poverty by strongly investing in information infrastructure, offering online training for residents, and stimulating rural human capital. Those findings convey indispensable theoretical suggestions and pragmatic support for generating an everlasting mechanism to lessen relative poverty and accomplish the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.