The empirical evidence of digital trends in more disadvantaged European Union regions in terms of income and population density

Remote rural and postindustrial regions are much more vulnerable to population drain in comparison with industrialized centers and capitals, due to obvious reasons such as meager job opportunities, difficulties in accessing public services in education, healthcare and transport, housing, entertainment, lack of integration with other territories and, finally, less advanced levels of digitalization. This represents an open challenge for the European Union within the framework of its Cohesion Policy. This paper analyzes the impact of digital trends, represented by the percentage of the population with access to internet and broadband and the percentage of individuals who buy goods and internet services (percentages provided by Eurostat) in less populated EU NUTS2 regions with lower income, on the crude population growth rate composed of natural changes in population and migratory flows and on the unemployment rate by applying panel data analysis. It has been possible to confirm that digitalization has a positive impact on natural changes in population in EU regions with lower economic development. On the contrary, the unemployment rate does not affect natural changes in population, but it does have a negative impact on migratory flows. The findings show that digitalization may contribute to reversing negative demographic trends in more disadvantaged EU regions in terms of income and population density.