Development Research at High Geographic Resolution : An Analysis of Night Lights, Firms, and Poverty in India Using the SHRUG Open Data Platform
The SHRUG is an open data platform describing multidimensional socioeconomic development across 600,000 villages and towns in India. This paper presents three illustrative analyses only possible with high-resolution data. First, it confirms that ni...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/596871612888394869/Development-Research-at-High-Geographic-Resolution-An-Analysis-of-Night-Lights-Firms-and-Poverty-in-India-Using-the-SHRUG-Open-Data-Platform http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35132 |
| Summary: | The SHRUG is an open data platform
describing multidimensional socioeconomic development across
600,000 villages and towns in India. This paper presents
three illustrative analyses only possible with
high-resolution data. First, it confirms that nighttime
lights are highly significant proxies for population,
employment, per-capita consumption, and electrification at
very local levels. However, elasticities between night
lights and these variables are far lower in time series than
in cross section, and vary widely across context and level
of aggregation. Next, this study shows that the distribution
of manufacturing employment across villages follows a power
law: the majority of rural Indians have considerably less
access to manufacturing employment than is suggested by
aggregate data. Third, a poverty mapping exercise explores
local heterogeneity in living standards and estimates the
potential targeting improvement from allocating programs at
the village- rather than at the district-level. The SHRUG
can serve as a model for open high-resolution data in
developing countries. |
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