Annalisa Loviglio (University of Bologna)
Guglielmo Barone and Denni Tommasi
Digital skills are essential for social inclusion, labor market participation, and effective engagement with children in an increasingly digital environment, yet many adults in high-income countries lack even basic competencies. Despite growing public investment - reflected, for example, in European initiatives such as the Digital Decade and the substantial resources allocated under the Next Generation EU framework - causal evidence on how to effectively build digital skills among disadvantaged populations, who typically lie in the left tail of the skill distribution, remains limited. We design and implement a randomized controlled trial evaluating a comprehensive digital inclusion intervention that jointly addresses financial and learning barriers to technology adoption. The study involves 859 low-income families with school-aged children in Italy, randomly assigned to a control group or to one of two treatment arms providing a tablet, free internet access, and digital literacy training of different intensity. One year after the intervention, both treatment arms generate large and persistent gains in digital skills, with no systematic differences across arms, as well as substantial improvements in digital parenting practices and use of online public services. Mediation analysis shows that gains in digital skills, rather than access alone, drive these broader outcomes. Effects on labor market outcomes are limited to expectations, suggesting the presence of binding structural constraints. Overall, our findings demonstrate that relatively modest, scalable interventions can generate meaningful digital inclusion gains.