Abstract: Breakthrough innovations in the digital economy have had a complex impact on the development of people’s livelihood, and put forward new requirements for the governance system and governance capabilities. The construction of digital government is the self-adaptation of the government to the evolution of the economy to the digital form, and it is expected to become a breakthrough strategy for the government to effectively deal with the challenges of people’s livelihood brought about by the digital economy development. However, related studies lack a systematic determination of the relationship between digital government, digital economy and people’s livelihood from the theoretical and empirical levels. Therefore, this paper theoretically sorts out the influence mechanism of the digital economy on people’s livelihood development, and the role of digital government in ensuring that the digital economy promotes the development of people’s livelihood. Furthermore, this paper takes cities in China as the research object, and uses the panel data fixed effects model and instrumental variable method to conduct an empirical analysis of the moderating effect. The results show that China’s digital economy plays an active role in people’s livelihood at the initial stage. The heterogeneity analysis results show that the promotion effect of digital economy on people’s livelihood development is the largest in the western region, followed by the eastern region, and the smallest in the central region. And digital government can enhance this effect. The research findings can provide theoretical and practical basis for digital government to play an important role in the coordinated development of digital economy and people’s livelihood in the new era.

Key words: digital economy, people’s livelihood, digital government, moderating effect