Left in the dark? Oil and rural poverty

Working paper

Do oil booms reduce rural poverty and inequality? To study this we measure rural poverty by counting people that live in darkness at night: combining high-resolution global satellite data on night-time lights and population from 2000-2013. We develop a measure that accurately identifies 74% of households as above or below the extreme poverty line when compared to over 600,000 household surveys. We find that both high oil prices and new discoveries increase illumination and GDP nationally. However, they also promote regional inequality because the increases are limited to towns and cities with no evidence that they benefit the rural poor.

Authors: Wills, S

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Series: OxCarre Papers
• Publication date: 2015-10-12
• Paper number: 164
• Keywords: regional inequality; poverty measurement; oil; rural poverty; urbanization; night-time lights