1. Data collection and analysis to accelerate ultra-poverty reduction in rural Africa
Chris Barrett, Cornell University
July 7, 2016
4th International Conference on Computational Sustainability
Cornell University

2. The ultra-poor are African
The big poverty reduction challenge is the persistence of concentrated ultra-poverty … in Africa, where it almost doubled in a generation.
Data source: World Bank PovcalNet
Source: World Bank, PovCalNet
In 1981 Africa was home to 12% of the world’s ultra-poor … 30 yrs later: 83%

3. The Economics of Poverty Traps
Poverty trap = “self-reinforcing mechanism which causes poverty to persist” (Azariadis & Stachurski, HEG 2005).
Reinforcing feedback: Violence and low productivity cause poverty. Poverty causes hunger and natural resource degradation. Hunger and degraded natural resources also cause low productivity and violence. Hence vicious cycle of poverty traps, hunger, violence and natural resources degradation.

4. The crucial role of data & analysis
The range of possible poverty trap mechanisms is large. Context matters enormously. Spatiotemporally relevant data thus key to attacking rural ultra-poverty.
3 major functions:
Diagnostics: What 1st/2nd/3rd limiting for a given people, place and time?
Targeting: Who? What? Where? When?
Design/evaluation of interventions

5. Diagnostics Phone-based crowd-sourcing rangeland conditions
Supplement remote
sensing data to add
precision
Identifying soil limitations
NIRS (handheld and eqpt-mounted) can improve soil
mapping and real-time plot mgmt (precision ag, etc.)
Early warning systems and high frequency diagnostics
Remote sensing of crop yields (Ermon & Burke), monitor
hh livelihoods/child health (Headey & Barrett)
Ushahidi and violence Esoko and markets

6. Targeting Choosing the right tool, place and people:
Targeting maps (Lang et al. WD 2013)
Improving on PMT (McBride)
Food assistance and MIFIRA
Fertilizer VCR maps (Woodard et al.)

7. Interventions
Based on diagnostics and targeting, introduce and evaluate interventions.
Ethiopian Commodities Exchange
Index-based livestock insurance
Faster, cheaper food assistance

8. “Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor we would know much of the economics that really matters.” - Theodore W. Schultz Opening sentences of 1979 Nobel Prize in Economics lecture
Advancing the economics of poverty reduction requires improved data collection and analysis.