Using Satellite Imagery and Machine Learning to Estimate the Livelihood Impact of Electricity Access

Nathan Ratledge, Gabe Cadamuro, Brandon de la Cuesta, Matthieu Stigler and Marshall Burke

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: In many regions of the world, sparse data on key economic outcomes inhibits the development, targeting, and evaluation of public policy. We demonstrate how advancements in satellite imagery and machine learning can help ameliorate these data and inference challenges. In the context of an expansion of the electrical grid across Uganda, we show how a combination of satellite imagery and computer vision can be used to develop local-level livelihood measurements appropriate for inferring the causal impact of electricity access on livelihoods. We then show how ML-based inference techniques deliver more reliable estimates of the causal impact of electrification than traditional alternatives when applied to these data. We estimate that grid access improves village-level asset wealth in rural Uganda by 0.17 standard deviations, more than doubling the growth rate over our study period relative to untreated areas. Our results provide country-scale evidence on the impact of a key infrastructure investment, and provide a low-cost, generalizable approach to future policy evaluation in data sparse environments.

Date: 2021-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cmp, nep-ene and nep-isf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2109.02890 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Using Satellite Imagery and Machine Learning to Estimate the Livelihood Impact of Electricity Access (2021)
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:arx:papers:2109.02890

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().