Poverty Mapping (Small-Area Estimation)

ELL poverty mapping, named after Chris Elbers, Jean Lanjouw, and Peter Lanjouw, is a small-area estimation method that produces poverty and inequality estimates for geographic units far smaller than a household survey can support on its own. It combines two data sources: a detailed household survey that measures consumption but covers too few households per locality, and a population census that covers everyone but does not measure consumption. The method estimates a model of consumption on variables common to both, imputes consumption into the census, and simulates to generate poverty estimates — with statistically valid standard errors — for districts, communes, or even villages, which are then drawn as poverty maps.