arXiv:2606. 07614v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reliable measurement of income and consumption is essential for monitoring poverty and inequality in low- and middle-income countries, yet full household surveys are costly and difficult to implement regularly.
By Vanesa Jord\'a, Miguel Ni\~no-Zaraz\'ua
arXiv:2607. 20559v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Monitoring poverty and food security indicators is imperative for addressing socioeconomic challenges in developing nations.
By Aditya Dutt, Paul Gader, Aditya Singh
arXiv:2608.29110v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The United States has allocated approximately $65 billion through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for broadband expansion, yet evidence-base...
By Xiao Han
DeepC4 is a deep learning-based spatial disaggregation method that uses local census statistics as cluster-level constraints and incorporates multiple conditional label relationships in a multitask learning framework. Applied to Rwandan urban morphology, it achieves macro‑F1 scores of 0.63, 0.78, and 0.45 for roof, wall, and height prediction, respectively, and estimates national dwelling and occupant counts within about 1.1% error compared to census records. The approach outperforms existing GEM and METEOR methods and covers 32‑49% more 500‑meter grid pixels across provinces.
By Joshua Dimasaka, Christian Gei{\ss}, Emily So
Progress in inclusive household surveys has strengthened socioeconomic evidence for forcibly displaced populations, providing indispensable benchmarks on living conditions and welfare. However, these...
arXiv:2501. 14546v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper investigates the novel application of Large Language Models (LLMs) with vision capabilities to analyze satellite imagery for village-level poverty prediction.
By Hamid Sarmadi, Ola Hall, Thorsteinn R\"ognvaldsson, Mattias Ohlsson
The paper presents a transfer‑learning approach that adapts a multimodal spatiotemporal vision transformer, originally trained on Demographic and Health Survey data, to estimate socioeconomic conditions in forced‑displacement settings. Using satellite‑derived geospatial covariates, the adapted model explains up to 66% of variation in socioeconomic outcomes in camp‑intersecting grids and 41% in non‑camp areas, achieving mean absolute errors of 4.37 and 5.41 index points respectively. This framework supplements periodic household surveys by providing regularly updated, spatially granular socioeconomic estimates that bridge data gaps between survey rounds.
By Steven Ndung'u, Adel Daoud, Ismael Yacoubou Djima, Hai-Anh H. Dang, Patrick Michael Brock
The paper presents an uncertainty‑aware machine‑learning approach for mapping poverty in Africa using satellite imagery. By combining simultaneous quantile regression with a novel conformal prediction technique, the authors generate statistically guaranteed prediction intervals for neighborhood‑level International Wealth Index estimates, achieving high explanatory power (R² = 0.75) while acknowledging broader uncertainty. They also propose a risk‑controlled aid allocation procedure that leverages both survey data and model predictions, showing in simulations that it can deliver more aid per eligible recipient than alternative strategies.
By Markus B. Pettersson, James Bailie, Mohammad Kakooei, Eagon Meng, Adel Daoud
arXiv:2606. 28390v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Geospatial vector data quality is a foundational research topic in GIS, yet classic rule-based quality assessment algorithms often struggle with diverse urban morphologies and massive data volumes.
By Hao Li, Chen Chu, Filip Biljecki, Cyrus Shahabi, Wenwen Li
arXiv:2507. 02921v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Learning effective representations of urban environments requires capturing spatial structure beyond fixed administrative boundaries.
By Mohammad Hashemi, Hossein Amiri, Andreas Zufle
The paper introduces DSP‑BART‑HS, a Dynamic Spatial Panel Bayesian Additive Regression Trees model with Horseshoe shrinkage, designed for high‑dimensional spatio‑temporal panel data. Across nine simulated scenarios, the model outperforms or matches a wide range of spatial econometric, non‑parametric machine learning, and small‑area estimators, especially when individual‑level non‑linearity drives outcome variance. The authors validate the method on two U.S. county‑level applications—intergenerational economic mobility and geographic income inequality—showing strong predictive accuracy even under unseen‑region, random, and temporal holdouts, while noting a temporal extrapolation advantage for a simpler autoregressive model.
By Hammed A. Olayinka, Saheed O. Olayemi
arXiv:2502. 06866v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The drastic changes in the global economy, geopolitical conditions, and disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted the cost of living and quality of life.
By Arun Kumar Selvaraj, Tanay Panat, Rohitash Chandra