skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Attention:

The NSF Public Access Repository (PAR) system and access will be unavailable from 10:00 PM to 12:00 PM ET on Tuesday, March 25 due to maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.


Search for: All records

Creators/Authors contains: "Smythe, Isabella S."

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. Hundreds of millions of poor families receive some form of targeted social assistance. Many of these antipoverty programs involve some degree of geographic targeting, where aid is prioritized to the poorest regions of the country. However, policy makers in many low-resource settings lack the disaggregated poverty data required to make effective geographic targeting decisions. Using several independent datasets from Nigeria, this paper shows that high-resolution poverty maps, constructed by applying machine learning algorithms to satellite imagery and other nontraditional geospatial data, can improve the targeting of government cash transfers to poor families. Specifically, we find that geographic targeting relying on machine learning–based poverty maps can reduce errors of exclusion and inclusion relative to geographic targeting based on recent nationally representative survey data. This result holds for antipoverty programs that target both the poor and the extreme poor and for initiatives of varying sizes. We also find no evidence that machine learning–based maps increase targeting disparities by demographic groups, such as gender or religion. Based in part on these findings, the Government of Nigeria used this approach to geographically target emergency cash transfers in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 
    more » « less