Abstract-Reliable statistical information is important to make political decisions on a sound basis and to help measure the impact of policies. Unfortunately, statistics offices in developing countries have scarce resources and statistical censuses are therefore conducted sporadically. Based on mobile phone communications and history of airtime credit purchases, we estimate the relative income of individuals, the diversity and inequality of income, and an indicator for socioeconomic segregation for finegrained regions of an African country. Our study shows how to use mobile phone datasets as a starting point to understand the socio-economic state of a country, which can be especially useful in countries with few resources to conduct large surveys.
REF used the air time credit purchases of a mobile phone in Ivory Coast to estimate the socio-economic status of different geographic areas of the country.
Evaluating socio-economic state of a country analyzing airtime credit and mobile phone datasets
ArXiv
ArXiv
Computer Science Physics