Estimating Poverty Using Cell Phone Data : Evidence from Guatemala
The dramatic expansion of mobile phone use in developing countries has given rise to a rich and largely untapped source of information about the characteristics of communities and regions. Call Detail Records (CDRs) obtained from cellular phones pr...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/122541487082260120/Estimating-poverty-using-cell-phone-data-evidence-from-Guatemala http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26136 |
| Summary: | The dramatic expansion of mobile phone
use in developing countries has given rise to a rich and
largely untapped source of information about the
characteristics of communities and regions. Call Detail
Records (CDRs) obtained from cellular phones provide highly
granular real-time data that can be used to assess
socio-economic behavior including consumption, mobility, and
social patterns. This paper examines the results of a CDR
analysis focused on five administrative departments in the
south west region of Guatemala, which used mobile phone data
to predict observed poverty rates. Its findings indicate
that CDR-based research methods have the potential to
replicate the poverty estimates obtained from traditional
forms of data collection, like household surveys or
censuses, at a fraction of the cost. In particular, CDRs
were more helpful in predicting urban and total poverty in
Guatemala more accurately than rural poverty. Moreover,
although the poverty estimates produced by CDR analysis do
not perfectly match those generated by surveys and censuses,
the results show that more comprehensive data could greatly
enhance their predictive power. CDR analysis has especially
promising applications in Guatemala and other developing
countries, which suffer from high rates of poverty and
inequality, and where limited fiscal and budgetary resources
complicate the task of data collection and underscore the
importance of precisely targeting public expenditures to
achieve their maximum antipoverty impact. |
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