ABSTRACT
As ICTs become ever more prevalent in developing countries, so too does it become increasingly necessary to understand how these technologies affect the well-being of those living in poverty, mainly, but not entirely, in the rural areas of those countries. (Because there are so many new ICTs, it would be impossible, within the scope of a single chapter, to deal with all of them. Accordingly, I have chosen to focus my attention on just one of them, namely, the Internet.) Yet, despite this growing necessity for improving our understanding of whether and to what extent the Internet alleviates poverty, one can point to remarkably little progress in the area. And while it is not difficult to find plausible reasons for this state of affairs, surely one of the most fundamental is the absence in the literature of a realistic analytical framework for mapping the connections between the Internet and poverty at the micro level.
