own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment University of Connecticut provides funding as a member of The Conversation US View all partners Leer en español The internet has been a right in Mexico since the nation’s Constitution was amended in 2013 to guarantee universal online access Yet just 47 percent of households there reported having internet in 2016 To get more citizens online, the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto has invested nearly US$1 billion in its “Mexico Conectado” initiative since 2013 hospitals and other public facilities nationwide Ensuring that all Mexicans have access to the internet would do more than just making good on the Constitution’s unfulfilled promise – it would also give the country’s economy a boost, my research shows Forty-three percent of Mexicans lived in poverty in 2016, according to the most recent data from the Mexican Institute of Statistics and Geography That’s down just 3 percentage points from 2010 Poverty rates have changed relatively little in Mexico over the past 20 years, despite ambitious anti-poverty programs offering cash assistance health care and educational opportunities to the poorest families With its digital inclusion strategy, Mexico hopes to nudge social mobility upward. That’s because internet access and poverty reduction are strongly connected, as my study of 92 developing countries The internet is now all but essential to economic mobility in a digital world Internet access makes it easier to move up in life for other reasons Social media connects people to others outside their immediate circle and gives them information about their rights as citizens In the United States, about 95 percent of people have access to the internet In Mexico, 63 percent are considered internet users. The roughly 50 million people who remain offline are also generally the country’s poorest residents In Baja California Sur, one of Mexico’s richest states, for example, 75 percent of households had internet connections in 2016. But just 13 percent of households in Chiapas, a southern state where three-quarters of the people live in poverty Mexico’s government understands that the digital divide between rich and poor is a problem for the country’s social and economic development In 2013 it became the first country in the world to make internet access a constitutional right with government deemed provider of access Recent court rulings in France and Costa Rica have determined that the government cannot restrict internet access But Mexico is unique in holding its government responsible for providing that service as it would water service or public education the Federal Economic Competition Commission and the Federal Telecommunications Institute A reform that broke up business magnate Carlos Slim’s communications monopoly in 2013 aided in this effort by reducing prices for data plans on mobile phones and wireless connections at home This helped more lower- and middle-class Mexicans get online But internet penetration is still scarce in the country’s poor rural south To help those communities, the government has created some 7,200 computing hubs offering free internet access and instructors to help visitors with basic skills like navigating the web The focus on computer literacy acknowledges that first-time internet users and older Mexicans may need hands-on help to benefit from the economic opportunities available online I interviewed staff and visitors at a public computer learning center in the Oaxacan mountain village of Tlahuitoltepec, where locals speak Mixe. This Mesoamerican language is used by some 100,000 people across the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco and Veracruz yet there are few websites in Mixe and it is not among the languages Google translates Instructors in such places struggle simply finding enough indigneous-language content online to make surfing the web rewarding and fun My findings suggests that language remains a barrier to the country’s digital inclusion strategy Mexico also has work to do when it comes to students Since 2013, over 5,000 rural public schools have gotten internet connections and 710,000 tablets were distributed to classrooms as part of the government’s Mexico Conectado program Students are also big users of the new government-funded computing hubs Even so, only half of all Mexican public elementary schools have internet connections, according to a recent government report Getting all citizens online in this sprawling developing country as Mexico’s government is constitutionally required to do But my research indicates that bridging the digital divide will pay off economically in the long run Giving the poorest Mexicans internet access provides them more opportunity to move out of poverty