Is newer better? Evaluating the suitability of nighttime luminosity in proxying poverty in Africa.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to evaluate whether nighttime luminosity sourced from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-Operational Linescan System satellite sensors is a suitable proxy for measuring poverty in Africa. Design/methodology/approach: Our study performs wavelet coherence analysis to investigate the time-frequency synchronization between the nightlight data and "income-to-wealth" ratio for 39 African countries between 1992 and 2012. Findings: All-in-all, the authors find that approximately a third of African countries produce positive synchronizations between nighttime data and "income-to-wealth" ratio and hence conclude that most African countries are not at liberty to use nighttime data to proxy conventional poverty statistics. Originality/value: In differing from previous studies, the authors examine the suitability of nightlight intensity as a proxy of poverty for individual African countries using much more rigorous analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]