Measuring Inequality Using Geospatial Data

Jaqueson Galimberti, Stefan Pichler () and Regina Pleninger

The World Bank Economic Review, 2023, vol. 37, issue 4, 549-569

Abstract: The main challenge in studying inequality is limited data availability, which is particularly problematic in developing countries. This study constructs a measure of light-based geospatial income inequality (LGII) for 234 countries/territories from 1992 to 2013 using satellite data on night-lights and gridded population data. Key methodological innovations include the use of varying levels of data aggregation, and a calibration of the lights–prosperity relationship to match traditional inequality measures based on income data. The new LGII measure is significantly correlated with cross-country variation in income inequality. Within countries, the light-based inequality measure is also correlated with measures of energy efficiency and the quality of population data. Two applications of the data are provided in the fields of health economics and international finance. The results show that light- and income-based inequality measures lead to similar results, but the geospatial data offer a significant expansion of the number of observations.

Keywords: nighttime lights; inequality; gridded population (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhad026 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Measuring Inequality using Geospatial Data (2021)
Working Paper: Measuring Inequality using Geospatial Data (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:37:y:2023:i:4:p:549-569.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The World Bank Economic Review is currently edited by Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik

More articles in The World Bank Economic Review from World Bank Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().