Far, Far Away Municipalities: Differences in Accessibility to Essential Services and the Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas

This study examines differences in accessibility to essential services across Italian municipalities in relation to the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI). Introduced in 2014, the SNAI targets territories characterized by demographic decline and limited access to key services such as schools, healthcare, and transport infrastructure. Using real-time travel data from OpenStreetMap (OSM) and TomTom, we develop a replicable framework to measure driving times to service hubs for more than 7,600 municipalities. We replicate the methodology used in the SNAI 2021–2027 classification and update the map of Inner Areas for 2025, documenting a 20 per cent increase in their number relative to the latest official classification. We then implement a two-period comparison based on a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) framework combined with Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to compare SNAI municipalities with similar Inner Areas. This empirical strategy improves comparability across groups but does not support a causal interpretation. The results show that SNAI municipalities exhibit a slightly larger increase in travel times relative to comparable areas. Overall, the findings suggest that differences in measured accessibility trends remain limited, indicating that improvements in road accessibility have been modest over the period considered.