Demographic disparities in Italian rural areas: how do rural policies cope with them?

The paper focuses on the analysis of Italian Rural Development Programs (RDPs) in the period 2014-2020 and aims to answer the research questions: a) To what extent does the EU rural development investment support address demographic differences between urban and rural areas, on the one hand, and rural areas with different demographic dynamics, on the other hand; b) LEADER initiative is more oriented toward social sustainability than the other set of RDP measures; c) which impacts have the demographic change on the demand for rural policies, under the assumption that the high rates of out migration might lower the investment initiatives in agri-food sector in less developed rural areas.