摘要：Despite the fact that a comprehensive analysis of digitalization processes in the EU memberstates has been carried out, the impact of a country’s digitalization level on the risks of poverty andsocial exclusion requires further investigation. The purpose of the paper is to verify a hypothesisthat a higher level of national digitalization provides positive trends in reducing the risks of povertyand social exclusion for the population. The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) was usedto evaluate the digitalization levels of the EU countries. The indicator “People at risk of poverty orsocial exclusion” (AROPE) was applied to estimate the poverty level. As the main research methods,the authors used a comparative and correlation analysis with respect to the above-mentionedindicators, as well as the Monte Carlo method in order to evaluate the probability of a change inthe indicator “population at risk of poverty or social exclusion” in 2021. The EU countries with higherdigitalization levels have a lower percentage of the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion.However, a higher digitalization level of the EU member states does not provide an accelerated riskreduction of poverty and social exclusion. Statistical calculations with respect to the entire populationof these countries mainly indicate reverse processes. At the same time, a further reduction of povertyand social exclusion level is less probable in the countries with a higher level of digitalization. Forrelatively poor segments of the population (the 1st and 2nd quintiles by income) in the EU memberstates, the level of digitalization does not play a significant role. For relatively wealthy segmentsof the population (the 3rd and 4th quintiles by income) the authors noticed a pattern: the higherthe level of digitalization is, the lower the risk of poverty and social exclusion becomes. A pairwisecomparison of countries with initially similar AROPE values showed that in most cases (3 out of5), the countries with higher levels of digitalization showed a more significant reduction in povertyand social exclusion. However, the probability of further positive changes in this area is higher forthe countries with a lower level of digitalization.
关键词：European Union; digital economy; digitalization; risk; poverty; social exclusion
