Micro-estimates of wealth data ‘can help tackle poverty’

ABSTRACT

Speed read Researchers say new wealth data set can help policymakers tackle poverty Around 97 million people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2021 But experts say more local, disaggregated data collection is needed A data project charting poverty levels in detail across the global South could help policymakers better target social assistance and humanitarian aid, researchers say. Deborah Hardoon, poverty and inequality lead, Development Initiatives Joshua Blumenstock, chancellor’s associate professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information and one of the lead authors of the study, said “The estimates of absolute and relative wealth are very fine-grained, with one for every 2.4-kilometre square grid cell, which is small enough to satisfy the needs of most policymakers, but also large enough to respect the privacy of individual households. See PDF] “For instance, we compared what our algorithm-generated estimates say about the wealth of people in village X to what an independent survey firm says about the wealth of people in village X. We found that — across four independent data sources from 18 different countries — our new micro-estimates provide remarkably accurate measurements of relative wealth and poverty in LMICs,” Blumenstock told SciDev.Net.