When it comes to mental health, do social protection programs matter more in times of crisis Using panel data from the Philippines around the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study compares depression rates among beneficiaries of an existing conditional cash transfer program to those of...

Hidden hunger, or micronutrient deficiencies, is a serious public health issue affecting approximately 2 billion people worldwide. Identifying areas with high prevalence of hidden hunger is crucial for targeted interventions and effective resource allocation. However, conventional methods such...

This paper analyzes extreme child poverty ($2.15/day poverty line) trends, as well as child poverty based on the higher international poverty lines of $3.65 and $6.85. The paper provides a trajectory of extreme child poverty (children living in extremely poor households) from 2013 to 2019 (based...

While the impact of COVID-19 on Sub-Saharan African labor markets is well documented, there is suggestive evidence that urban households may have fared particularly poorly. This paper uses data from high-frequency phone surveys in 27 Sub-Saharan African countries to investigate which kinds of...

Reliable estimates of economic welfare for small areas are valuable inputs into the design and evaluation of development policies. This paper compares the accuracy of point estimates and confidence intervals for small area estimates of wealth and poverty derived from four different prediction...

This paper offers a nontechnical review of selected applications that combine survey and geospatial data to generate small area estimates of wealth or poverty. Publicly available data from satellites and phones predicts poverty and wealth accurately across space, when evaluated against census...

This paper presents new evidence on the levels and trends of vaccine hesitancy in developing countries based on harmonized high-frequency phone surveys from more than 120,000 respondents in 53 low- and middle-income countries. These countries represent a combined 30 percent of the population of...

Estimates of poverty are an important input into policy formulation in developing countries. The accurate measurement of poverty rates is therefore a first-order problem for development policy. This paper shows that combining satellite imagery with household surveys can improve the precision and...

Understanding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on households' welfare in areas at the admin-1 level subject to fragility, conflict, and violence is important to inform programs and policies in this context. Harmonized data from high-frequency phone surveys indicate that, at the onset of the...

This paper presents evidence on the extent to which a set of real-time indicators tracked changes in gross domestic product across 142 countries in 2020. The real-time indicators include Google mobility, Google search trends, food price information, nitrogen dioxide, and nighttime lights. Google...