The Geospatial Poverty Portal is the World Bank’s repository of development data at the subnational level. Collecting granular data on key welfare indicators is an increasingly important topic in international development. In line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which call for a “data revolution” to fill data gaps in low and middle-income countries, the portal is designed to meet the demand for better and more targeted decision-making data.
The ability to disaggregate poverty and inequality indicators by region and over time is incredibly powerful, increasing the volume of available information ten-fold. Subnational data can be used to improve the targeting of development interventions, produce more precise poverty estimates, and pair with other sources to generate novel forms of analysis.
As of Fall 2023, the portal includes data on 1,800 subregions across 166 economies. There are four sections to explore the full breadth of available data:
- The Global Subnational Atlas of Poverty (GSAP), a database of subnational line-up poverty rates (live estimates projected to a common year, 2019) for 166 economies
- Interactive Maps, which include poverty, inequality and multidimensional poverty at multiple national and subnational levels over time
- The Small Area Estimation (SAE) section, a repository of historical poverty mapping exercises and the latest methods to produce more accurate poverty estimates (In development)
- And the Story section, which highlights integrations and tools created using subnational poverty data.
Please cite the data as: World Bank. (2023). Geospatial Poverty Portal. World Bank Group. www.pipmaps.worldbank.org. Accessed {date}.