ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
This article is part of the Research TopicDigital Technologies for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentView all articles
Digital Literacy and Income Inequality Among Farm Households: Evidence from China
Provisionally accepted
- 1Huzhou College, Huzhou, China
- 2Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
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The digital economy serves as a core pathway to address income inequality among rural households and promote common prosperity. As a critical competency essential for rural households in the digital era, whether digital literacy can effectively mitigate imbalances in income distribution among them has emerged as a pressing academic question in the context of rural revitalization. This study employs panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) spanning 2014– 2020 to empirically examine the impact of digital literacy on income inequality among rural households. The findings reveal that: (1) digital literacy exerts a significant mitigating effect on income inequality among rural households. This conclusion remains robust after addressing endogeneity using two-stage least squares (2SLS) and the extended regression model (ERM), providing micro-level empirical evidence for how the digital economy empowers equitable income distribution; (2) Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the income-equalizing effect of digital literacy exhibits pronounced regional and group differences, manifesting more prominently in central regions and among rural households with lower education levels; (3) Mechanism tests further uncover that non-cognitive abilities significantly attenuate the mitigating effect of digital literacy on income inequality among rural households—that is, the higher the level of non-cognitive abilities, the weaker the capacity of digital literacy to narrow income gaps. This study suggests that enhancing digital literacy among rural households and optimizing the allocation of new human capital represent effective strategies for reducing income disparities among them. At the same time, the moderating role of non-cognitive abilities must be emphasized, enabling the inclusive sharing of digital dividends through differentiated empowerment, thereby providing theoretical support and policy references for advancing rural revitalization and common prosperity objectives.
Keywords: Farm households, Digital Literacy, Income inequality, Non-cognitive ability, China
Received: 20 Oct 2025; Accepted: 28 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao, 翠 and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: 付 翠
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