The what and the why

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Where traditional surveys prove to be too expensive, too slow or unreliable, innovative researchers have been discovering the power of transactional data to tell the story instead. In 2013, for example, Thoralf Gutierrez and Vincent Blondel, of Louvain University, and Gautier Krings, of Real Impact Analytics, used data from a mobile phone company in Cote d’Ivoire to produce a detailed map of poverty. “Many developing countries do not have up-to-date statistical information about the state of their population, ” they wrote. “Surveys are onerous; they are not conducted very often… Even when they are conducted, their reliability is questionable.”

Their insight was the behavioural observation that poor people topped up their phones with smaller amounts of credit, even if it meant they wasted time and ran out of credit more often. By mapping the top-up amount per transaction, using geo-location data, the trio measured purchase averages in each region (an indication of average disposable income), the variation in those ...