Intercensal updating using structure-preserving methods and satellite imagery

TL;DR

This paper enhances census updating methods by integrating satellite imagery to provide more accurate annual population and poverty estimates at small-area levels, addressing the infrequency of traditional censuses.

Contribution

It introduces a structure-preserving updating method that incorporates satellite imagery as auxiliary data for more timely subnational population and poverty estimates.

Findings

Improved accuracy of small-area population estimates using satellite data.

Effective annual updates of multidimensional poverty indicators.

Validated approach with data from Senegal between 2013 and 2020.

Abstract

Censuses are fundamental building blocks of most modern-day societies, yet collected every ten years at best. We propose an extension of the widely popular census updating technique Structure Preserving Estimation by incorporating auxiliary information in order to take ongoing subnational population shifts into account. We apply our method by incorporating satellite imagery as additional source to derive annual small-area updates of multidimensional poverty indicators from 2013 to 2020 for a population at risk: female-headed households in Senegal. We evaluate the performance of our proposal using data from two different census periods.