Progress on Real Time Monitoring of Welfare

To help reduce poverty and vulnerability, we need more timely information on household welfare. Countries derive official measures of poverty from household surveys, which are only conducted every few years due to financial and administrative costs, with even greater lags in low-income and fragile countries. However, by combining traditional surveys with different modelling approaches and data sources, countries can develop monitoring systems that provide up-to-date estimates on household welfare. Investing in this capacity to monitor welfare in "real time" is essential to inform policy action in the wake of shocks and changing circumstances. In this talk, Professor Blumenstock will share findings from his latest research on the use of new data and technology for monitoring welfare and reflect on the challenges and opportunities going forward.

• Luis Felipe López-Calva, Chair

  Global Director, Poverty & Equity, World Bank Group

  Luis Felipe López-Calva is the Global Director for Poverty and Equity at the World Bank Group.

  López-Calva has over 30 years of professional experience working with international institutions and advising national governments. He rejoined the World Bank in 2022 from the United Nations Development Programme, where he served as UN Assistant Secretary General and Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean since 2018.

  López-Calva comes to the position of Global Director for the Poverty and Equity Global Practice with a commitment to advancing four key priorities: (i) to elevate poverty reduction and equitable growth to the top of the international development agenda; (ii) to expand the Global Practice's technical expertise from measurement and monitoring of poverty and inequality to cutting-edge policy analysis for pro-poor development; (iii) to formulate clear strategic directions for the Global Practice, implement these priorities in global and regional programs using both formal and informal authority, and represent the World Bank Group externally; and (iv) to bring conceptual clarity and operational implications to the discussion about the links between climate action and equity.

  Luis Felipe López-Calva, Chair
• Joshua Blumenstock, Presenter

  Chancellor's Associate Professor, U.C. Berkeley School of Information and Goldman School of Public Policy

  Joshua Blumenstock is a Chancellor's Associate Professor at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information and the Goldman School of Public Policy. He is the Co-director of the Global Policy Lab and the Center for Effective Global Action. Blumenstock does research at the intersection of machine learning and empirical economics, with a focus on how novel data and technology can better address the needs of poor and vulnerable people around the world. He has a Ph.D. in Information Science and a M.A. in Economics from U.C. Berkeley, and Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Physics from Wesleyan University. He is a recipient of awards including the NSF CAREER award, the Intel Faculty Early Career Honor, and the U.C. Berkeley Chancellor's Award for Public Service. His work has appeared in general interest journals including Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as top economics journals (e.g., the American Economic Review) and computer science conferences (e.g., ICML, KDD, AAAI, WWW, CHI).

  Joshua Blumenstock, Presenter