Tracking Socio-Economic Development in Rural India over Two Decades Using Satellite Imagery

Abstract

Longitudinal analysis of socio-economic development at sub-national scales can reveal valuable insights about which areas tend to develop faster than others and why. However, such analysis is difficult to conduct with traditional data sources such as censuses and surveys which are not repeated frequently and may require assumptions for imputation of values at non-surveyed locations. Indicators of socio-economic development based on satellite data have emerged as a proxy to track development at fine spatial and temporal scales. We build a model using daytime and nightlights satellite data to estimate an index of socio-economic development at the village level in India. We evaluate our model for temporal robustness and use it to produce estimates at three time points over a two-decade period. We then use these estimates to understand the effect on village-level development of factors such as the geographic distance of a village to hubs of economic activity and the inequality of development in the district. Our findings provide evidence of the possible impact that policy changes during this period have had on village development.