The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of digital transformation on employment, earnings, poverty and income inequality in the 2010-2019 decade, as well as provide an indication of what this impact could be in the coming decade, across all EU Member States and in the EU as a whole. In addition, this study also examines how digital technologies, which includes Artificial Intelligence (AI), are currently used and could be used by public administrations for improving the delivery and design of social policies as well as how they could be employed to monitor poverty and income inequality. In so doing, the study seeks to provide key insight to the development of the European Commission’s work on addressing poverty and income inequalities in the decade to come.
As such, the study addresses the following six central research questions:
- Q1. What has been the impact (quantitative estimate) of the digital transformation on employment and on wages along the income distribution (distributional impacts) in the last decade in each of the EU Member States and for the EU as a whole?
- Q2. What has been the impact (quantitative estimate) of the digital transformation on poverty and income inequality in the last decade in each of the EU Member States and for the EU as a whole (also briefly considering the impact on cross-country inequalities)?
- Q3. What could be – under a few different scenarios – the possible impact (indication of it) of the digital transformation on employment and on wages along the income distribution (distributional impacts) in the coming decade in each of the EU Member States and for the EU as a whole?
- Q4. What could be – under a few different scenarios – the possible impact (indication of it) of the digital transformation on poverty and income inequality in the coming decade in each of the EU Member States and for the EU as a whole (also briefly considering the impact on cross-country inequalities)?
- Q5. How could digital technologies (including AI) be used, or are already used, by the public sector for improving the delivery and the design of in-cash social benefits, of active labour market policies and of certain social services? What are or could be the benefits and issues/risks resulting from such uses?
- Q6. How could digital technologies (including AI) be used, or are already used, by the public sector to complement the monitoring of poverty and income inequality in the EU, including by providing new types of data and analyses that could complement existing statistics in this domain?
Team members
Prof Matteo Richiardi
Dr Claire Fenwick
