From SciDev.Net
Micro-estimates of wealth data ‘can help tackle poverty’
Neena Bhandari
A data project charting poverty levels in detail across the global South could help policymakers better target social assistance and humanitarian aid, researchers say...
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.” ...
“In rough terms, the algorithms use the big data to interpolate wealth estimates into areas where surveys have not been conducted,” said Blumenstock, who is also director of the Data-Intensive Development Lab, and co-director of the Center for Effective Global Action...
Joshua Blumenstock is an Associate Professor at the School of Information, and a Ph.D. program alumnus (2012).
