Nighttime lights as a proxy for human development at the local level

Chapter 4 has a regional focus on Africa and explores whether nighttime lights, calculated from weather satellite recordings, are a useful proxy for human development at the local level. Indicators of household wealth, education and health are constructed from geo-coded Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for 29 African countries. The study shows that nighttime lights are positively associated with these indicators across DHS cluster locations as well as across grid cells of roughly 50 by 50 km.