The missing dimension in Europe’s war on poverty

Europe is losing its war on poverty because daily life has shifted online, and a new front has emerged: digital poverty. As public services, education, and economic opportunities migrate to the internet, the inability to participate fully in digital society becomes a critical deprivation. The European Commission’s State of the Digital Decade 2025 reports that only 55.6% of EU residents have basic digital skills, far from the 80% 2030 target. The pandemic accelerated our shift online; ignoring digital poverty now means accepting a modern form of exclusion.

UN Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1) commits us to “[e]nd poverty in all its forms everywhere,” yet current efforts largely overlook digital deprivation. Furthermore, the UN’s narrow focus on digital access in its SDG progress reports is a critical blind spot. To truly reduce inequality (SDG 10), the EU must champion social inclusion by recognising digital poverty as a distinct deprivation, measuring it as rigorously as income to address how it targets the most vulnerable.

From digital divide to digital poverty

For years, policymakers spoke of the “digital divide,” the gap between those who have access to information and communication technology and those who do not (van Dijk, 2017). In the policy context, this term captures relative disparities but fails to define a clear threshold of digital basic needs (e.g. ITU, 2024). “Digital inequality” is an even broader concept encompassing all kinds of usage and outcome differences, which makes it difficult to operationalise for policy tracking. Digital poverty, by contrast, frames the issue in absolute terms: it recognises when people or households lack the minimum digital resources and capabilities needed to live a decent life in an increasingly digital society, and highlights where support is required. As the British Academy report crucially identifies, “having digital access does not always mean a person can meaningfully participate in the digital world (2022)”. This more holistic notion of digital poverty focuses attention on who is falling below an acceptable digital minimum, much as income poverty focuses on those below a poverty line.

At the EU level, “digital poverty” is not an established policy term. It has no formal definition and rarely appears in official strategies. Where used, mainly by think tanks, NGOs, and academics, the definitions vary. This fragmentation blurs the boundaries with concepts like the digital divide and prevents agreement on a concrete minimum threshold for affordability, devices, skills, and support.

Defining and measuring digital poverty offers clear advantages. Unlike the moving target of the digital divide, a digital poverty measure would set a fixed societal baseline. While “digital inequality” remains an academic umbrella term, digital poverty can be translated into concrete indicators for governments to monitor. In effect, it extends the ethos of SDG 1 into the digital realm: no one should be deprived of the basic digital tools and competencies needed to thrive when they wish to use them. Once a shared, operational definition is agreed, measurement and targeted, evidence-based policies can follow.

We propose the following definition of digital poverty based on our ongoing research: digital poverty is the condition of lacking the minimum digital infrastructure, skills, access, and supportive environment needed to participate fully in the digital economy and society. It arises from economic, social, and educational barriers that prevent people from using digital technologies to improve their quality of life when they want to.

The multidimensional nature of digital poverty

Like traditional poverty, digital poverty is multidimensional. Connectivity alone is not a capability. People can live under coverage and still be digitally poor due to unaffordable tariffs, obsolete devices, insufficient skills, or unsafe online environments. These dimensions are interdependent. A household may be formally “connected” yet effectively excluded from education, health, work, and civic life. Recognising this interdependence allows policymakers to design composite minimums and target remedies accordingly.

Mind the gap: Current monitoring falls short

If digital poverty is so critical, why has it not been measured? Because Europe has not yet agreed on what exactly to count. The term lacks a shared, operational definition and threshold in EU policy. Without common ground, monitoring defaults to proxies. Existing indices were built to benchmark average performance, not to diagnose deprivation; they capture only pieces of the puzzle. Institutional silos and the political risk of creating a poverty-style obligation also discourage a headline metric. In essence, the measurement gap is a definition gap. The EU’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) tracks countries’ overall digital performance. Yet these indicators focus on averages and relative rankings. They do not identify exactly who is left behind or set a clear “digital minimum” that everyone should attain. For example, while 90% of a country’s population might have high-speed internet, if 30% of low-income households cannot afford it, that nation’s “high performance” is a statistical illusion that hides profound digital poverty. On DESI the country excels; in reality, millions might remain digitally poor.

Eurostat’s SDG monitoring touches on digital inclusion only tangentially, not as a poverty dimension. This fragmented monitoring misses the structural, multidimensional nature of digital poverty. It is akin to measuring average calories available in a country but failing to check how many people are malnourished. We have data on the digital “haves and have-nots” but lack an official EU metric for how many live below a digital minimum, and why.

Europe’s opportunity to lead

Europe is uniquely positioned to make digital poverty visible and solvable. It already marries world-class social statistics with binding digital targets. What is missing is an instrument that counts who is digitally poor, why, and where. By treating digital deprivation as a formal policy domain, on a par with income deprivation, the EU can modernise its commitment to SDG 1 and advance SDG 10.

The first step is methodological: agree on a definition of digital poverty and develop a harmonised Digital Poverty Index with explicit minimum thresholds and a headline rate decomposable by place and population. Next, test and refine it with a small, diverse group of Member States. The indicators can then be mainstreamed into the State of the Digital Decade, Eurostat’s SDG monitoring, and the European Semester.

In parallel, act on three policy fronts:

1. Legislative/regulatory. Set a “digital basic service” floor with social tariffs and a device sufficiency standard.
2. Finance/investment. Tie cohesion and Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) resources to measured reductions in the at-risk-of-digital-poverty rate.
3. Programmatic. Fund trusted access points and community-based skills and safety support via the Digital Education Action Plan and national strategies.

This measurement-to-mandate pathway would let the EU target remedies with precision, report credibly on SDG 1 in a digital society, and set a global template for integrating inclusion into the digital transition.