On the construction of the World Bank’s Subnational Poverty and Inequality Databases: Documentation

In many countries, large differences in poverty persist at the subnational level. In addition, global challenges such as climate change, fragility, economic crises, and food insecurity are often transborder issues that pose significant risks for poverty reduction both across and within countries. Traditional poverty measures are generally presented at the national level, potentially obscuring local and regional variations of poverty and inequality. To overcome these challenges, this note describes the construction of two databases designed to provide a more granular perspective on poverty. The Subnational Poverty and Inequality Database (SPID) presents direct survey estimates of poverty and inequality from nationally representative household surveys over time. The Global Subnational Atlas of Poverty (GSAP) presents poverty estimates of survey-representative administrative areas projected to a common year. Both databases use the same underlying household survey data used by the World Bank to monitor global poverty.