The socioeconomic impacts of the CAP: Systematic literature review

One of the main aims of the EU's common agricultural policy (CAP) is to promote the development of rural areas. Although there is a rich abundance of academic literature on the impacts of the CAP on rural areas, there has yet to be a comprehensive overview on the effects. The paper aims to fill this gap by providing a systematic literature review on the impacts of the CAP on the socioeconomic situation in EU's rural areas. A two-stage search procedure to identify the relevant literature is employed. Only 59 publications that estimated the socioeconomic impacts of the CAP were found. The main findings are the following: the reviewed studies have found CAP to have no significant impacts on rural development as an abstract concept and the rural population; positive but negligible effects on economic output, the generational change in farming and gender equality; a positive effect on employment; and limited or inconclusive evidence about the impact on economic diversification, regional cohesion and civil participation.