Income Inequality and National Strategy for Inner Areas: Does Location Matter?

This paper examines the relationship between income inequality and municipalities classified as “inner areas” according to the classification proposed by the National Strategy for Inner Areas (NSIA) from 2012 to 2018. This classification categorizes municipalities into different groups based on their distance from essential service provision centers. By adopting a multilevel approach along with Beta Generalized Linear Mixed Models, we obtain two major results. First, inner areas show a lower income concentration index than non-inner municipalities. Ultra-peripheral municipalities manifest the greatest difference. Second, our findings show that location matters. While the sign is negative in southern and northern Italy, we find the opposite result in the central regions, where the ultra-peripheral municipalities show higher income inequality compared to non-inner areas.