In the context of persistent urban-rural income disparity, exploring how digital tools can promote rural development and advance common prosperity has become a central concern for both policymakers and researchers. This paper explores the impact of digital village construction on the urban-rural income gap, using the establishment of national digital village pilot zones as a quasi-natural experiment. Based on county-level panel data from 2016 to 2022, this study adopts two distinct yet complementary identification strategies. The first approach is a Difference-in-Differences (DID) framework that incorporates bootstrapping and sample screening. It highlights the role of sample structure, selection bias, and the parallel trends assumption in shaping the empirical results. The second is the Synthetic Difference-in-Differences (SDID) method, a recent quasi-experimental approach that offers greater flexibility in addressing potential trend heterogeneity. Baseline regression results from both DID and SDID approaches show that the implementation of the national digital village pilot zones policy significantly reduces the urban-rural income gap. Mechanism analyses from both methods indicate that the effect operates primarily through increasing rural residents’ income, with no significant impact on urban income. In addition, agricultural innovation and digital inclusive finance are identified as potential channels, each showing significance under one identification strategy and marginal significance under the other. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the policy is more effective in southern regions, primarily due to their higher level of digital economic integration. This study sheds light on the mechanisms through which digital transformation promotes urban-rural equity, offering theoretical and practical insights for advancing rural revitalization through digital empowerment.