Where the poor are

de Robert S. Chen, Elisabeth Sydor

Since Charles Booth produced his remarkably detailed maps depicting inequality in Victorian London, poverty maps have been used to inform policy. But not until recently have high-resolution maps become available, making it possible to interpret and apply poverty maps in creative new ways to better understand poverty and improve policy making on behalf of the poor. Where the Poor Are: An Atlas of Poverty brings together a diverse collection of maps from different continents and countries, depicting small area estimates of vital development indicators at unprecedented levels of spatial detail. The atlas is a product of the CIESIN Global Poverty Mapping Project, begun in 2004, which was made possible by support from the Japan Policy and Human Resource Development Fund, in collaboration with The World Bank. The atlas of 21 full-page poverty maps reveals possible causal patterns and provides practical examples of how the data and tools have been used, and may be used, in applied decisions and poverty interventions.