Real-Time Measures of Poverty and Vulnerability

In wealthy nations, novel sources of data from the internet and social media are enabling new approaches for social science research and public policy. In developing countries, by contrast, fewer sources of such data exist, and researchers and policymakers often rely on data that are unreliable or out of date. Here, we develop a new approach for measuring the dynamic welfare of individuals remotely by analyzing their logs of mobile phone use. We calibrate our approach with an original high-frequency panel survey of 1,200 Afghans, and an experimental protocol that randomized the timing and value of an unconditional cash transfer to each respondent. We show that mobile phone metadata, obtained with the respondent's consent from Afghanistan's largest mobile phone company, can be used to estimate the social and economic well-being of respondents, including the onset of positive and negative shocks. We discuss the potential for such methods to transform current practices of policy monitoring and impact evaluation.