Can Poverty Rates Be Estimated Using Satellite Data?

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Abstract
Standard methods for estimating poverty rates produce aggregated results for individual countries or administrative units. There are a wide number of potential applications for disaggregated grids of population numbers in poverty. We have investigated the possible use the brightness of satellite observed nighttime lights along with along with gridded population count data in the estimation of poverty numbers. Preliminary results indicate that in general lighting is dimmer or absent in areas with high poverty numbers. It is likely that several calibration curves would need to be developed to account for cultural and technological differences in lighting.