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Inequality in India can be seen from outer space
Are night lights on earth captured by satellites from outer space a good way to measure inequality? Economists Praveen Chakravarty and Vivek Dehejia certainly believe so. They acquired images grabbed by satellites from the US Air Force Defence Meteorological Satellite Programme. These satellites circle the earth 14 times a day and record lights from the earth's surface at night with sensors. They superimposed a map depicting India's districts on their images, allowing them to develop a unique data set of luminosity values, by district and over time.
Using data generated by the night lights, they studied of 387 of 640 districts in 12 states. These districts account for 85% of India's population and 80% of its GDP. Some 87% of parliamentary seats are in these districts. Using the novel methodology, the economists documented income divergence in India.
[...] Some 380 districts in 12 states were on average just a fifth as bright as the big cities of Mumbai and Bangalore. Also, 90% of all the districts are just a third as bright in the night as the top 10% of all districts. And the ratio has worsened between 1992 - a year after India embraced economic reforms - and 2013.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 30 2018, @11:57AM (1 child)
As my net worth increases, I both relocate myself to less luminous homes (moving from high density areas to lower density areas) and acquire land which I am effectively protecting from emitting light in the night. Should I win the lottery, the trend will continue.
Having said that, I did just install 9x7W LED garden lights which run from sunset to 11pm - basically just because I can, and I didn't like the pitch black look outside the windows in the evenings.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:25PM
Ah yes, the power of personal anecdotes that go against the shaky evidence of direct photography. Ugh, for supposedly smart people around here there is a lot of stupidity. Interesting possibilities of error sources, but hardly enough to debunk the trend or even throw some shade.