Small area estimation of poverty in four West African countries by integrating survey and geospatial data

Abstract

The paper presents methodology to generate experimental small area estimates (SAE) of
poverty in four West African countries: Chad, Guinea, Mali, and Niger. Due to the absence of
recent census data in the four countries, household level survey data are integrated with grid level geospatial data, which are used as covariates in model-based estimation. Leveraging
geospatial data enables reporting of poverty estimates more frequently at disaggregated
administrative levels and makes estimation feasible in areas for which survey data are not
available. The paper leverages the availability of a recent census in Burkina Faso for evaluation purposes. Estimates obtained with the same survey instruments and candidate geospatial covariates as the other four countries are compared against estimates obtained using recent census data and an empirical best predictor under a unit level model. For Burkina Faso, estimates obtained using geospatial data are highly correlated with the census-based ones in sampled areas but moderately correlated in non-sampled areas. The results demonstrate that in the absence of recent census data, small area estimation with publicly available geospatial covariates is feasible, can lead to large efficiency improvements compared to direct estimation and improve the timeliness of small area estimates.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Nikos Tzavidis: orcid.org/0000-0002-8413-8095

ORCID for Angela Luna Hernandez: orcid.org/0000-0001-8629-1918

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