Development Research at High Geographic Resolution: An Analysis of Night Lights, Firms, and Poverty in India Using the SHRUG Open Data Platform

Sam Asher (), Tobias Lunt, Ryu Matsuura and Paul Michael Novosad

No 9540, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Energy Policies&Economics; Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies; General Manufacturing; Plastics&Rubber Industry; Pulp&Paper Industry; Textiles; Apparel&Leather Industry; Construction Industry; Common Carriers Industry; Food&Beverage Industry; Inequality; ICT Policy and Strategies; ICT Legal and Regulatory Framework (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-02-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-dev, nep-geo and nep-ict
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Journal Article: Development Research at High Geographic Resolution: An Analysis of Night-Lights, Firms, and Poverty in India Using the SHRUG Open Data Platform (2021)
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