Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/235107 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
KOF Working Papers No. 493
Publisher: 
ETH Zurich, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, Zurich
Abstract: 
The main challenge in studying economic inequality is limited data availability, which is particularly problematic in developing countries. We construct a measure of economic inequality for 234 countries/territories from 1992 to 2013 using satellite data on night lights and gridded population data. Key methodological innovations include the use of varying levels of data aggregation, and a calibration of the lights-prosperity relationship to match traditional inequality measures based on income data. We obtain a measure that is significantly correlated with cross-country variation in income inequality. We provide three applications of the data in the fields of health economics and international finance. Our results show that light- and income-based inequality measures lead to similar results in terms of cross-country correlations, but not for the dynamics of inequality within countries. Namely, we find that the light-based inequality measure can capture more enduring features of economic activity that are not directly captured by income.
Subjects: 
Nighttime lights
inequality
gridded population
JEL: 
D63
E01
I14
O11
O47
O57
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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