1. The Geographical Correlates of Global Poverty Everyone thinks they know where the poor are: Is anybody right? Marc Levy Deborah Balk Glenn Deane Adam Storeygard Sonya Ahamed CIESIN Earth Institute Columbia University www.ciesin.columbia.edu 1.Motivation and approach 2.Where are the poor – simple descriptives 3.Where are the poor – multivariate regressions 4.Conclusions and implications – methods, data, interventions

2. Motivations Describe spatial patterns Hotspots, traps, anomalies, … Test hypotheses Climate, elevation, disease vectors, access to markets, soil fertility as constraints on human development Explore differences in regional patterns Do these relationships vary across world regions? Support design of effective interventions Facilitate interdisciplinary research on poverty contingent on spatial dynamics

3. Infant Mortality Rate 0-15: Not poor 15-32: Somewhat poor 32- 65: Moderately poor 65-100: Poor 100- up: Extremely poor

4. Elevation

5. Distance to Port

6. Elevation and Distance to Port

7. Length of Growing Season

8. Drought (3 consecutive overlapping 3-month seasons with rainfall at least 50% below normal)

9. Growing Season and Drought Distribution of non-poor population Distribution of poor and extremely poor population

10. Spatial dependencies confound ability to calculate regression models

12. Who is my neighbor?

13. Anomalies: Africa elevation effect (malaria?) Chemical soil properties Slope Access behaves largely as expected. Pop Density or Transport always sig; not always both. Asia an anomaly (China effect?) Most consistent biophysical effects: Drought Physical and mineral soil deficiencies Malaria

14. Conclusions Observations, methods need to catch up. Global patterns discernible, but clear regional differences. Clear impact of geographic factors weakly reflected in dominant intervention debates.

15. Remoteness is rampant in 60 countries, and poor farmers face high input prices and poor opportunities to sell products, says TI Transportation Internationals Access Index ranks a record 146 countries; most sub- Saharan African countries are prone to high remoteness Transportation International Market Access Index 2004 TRANSPORTATION INTERNATIONAL the coalition for access

16. Thanks!