The aim of the paper is the analysis of the “consumption” of rural development poli- cies by family farms. The underlying hypothesis is that family farm’s characteristics influence the consumption of rural development policies. Therefore, a relevant aspect to be examined concerns family size, localization in life cycle, and the presence of assis- tants within the family farms. The results of our analysis permit to emphasize the impor- tance of family context in the access to Rdp and the relevance of the family assistants on farm’s propensity to get funded.