Nighttime Lights as a Proxy for Human Development at the Local Level

Anna Bruederle and Roland Hodler

No 6555, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Nighttime lights are increasingly used by social scientists as a proxy for economic activity and economic development in subnational spatial units. However, so far, our understanding of what nighttime lights capture is limited. We construct local indicators of household wealth, education and health from geo-coded Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for 29 African countries. We show that nighttime lights are positively associated with these indicators across DHS cluster locations as well as across grid cells of roughly 50 x 50 km. We conclude that nighttime lights are a good proxy for human development at the local level.

Keywords: nighttime lights; local development; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 I25 I32 O15 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-big, nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Journal Article: Nighttime lights as a proxy for human development at the local level (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6555

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