Abstract: The increasingly wide income disparity is a universal problem in this world. At the same time, the global digital service is developing rapidly, while "digital inequality" is becoming more and more serious, since the digital service industry has been dominated by developed countries. Based on the fact of "digital inequality", this paper makes an empirical analysis about the impact of income disparity on the import of digital service by using the panel data of 130 countries from 2007-2019. The results show that the growing income disparity will significantly reduce the import of digital service in developing countries, which doesn’t have significant impact in developed countries. After further introducing instrumental variable and dynamic panel data to alleviate endogeneity, our results remain robust. By explaining the impact that income disparity has on the import of digital service, this paper suggests that in addition to the development of the Internet and ICT technology, it is also important for the developing countries to narrow the income disparity to catch up with the digital economy era and avoid further "digital marginalization".

Key words: income disparity, digital service import, digital marginalization, instrumental variable, difference GMM