The Relative Wealth Index predicts the relative standard of living within countries using de-identified connectivity data, satellite imagery and other nontraditional data sources. It has been built by researchers at the University of Carlifornia – Berkeley and Facebook. The estimates are built by applying machine learning algorithms to vast and heterogeneous data from satellites, mobile phone networks, topographic maps, as well as aggregated and de-identified connectivity data from Facebook. They train and calibrate the estimates using nationally-representative household survey 20 data from 56 LMICs, then validate their accuracy using four independent sources of household survey data from 18 countries. They also provide confidence intervals for each micro-estimate to facilitate responsible downstream use. The data is provided for 93 low and middle-income countries at 2.4km resolution. It covers the time between April 01, 2021 and December 22, 2023.
An interactive map of the Relative Wealth Index is available here: http://beta.povertymaps.net/
