PovcalNet

The World Bank released software to reliably calculate poverty measures from grouped data, called Povcal. The desktop tool was moved to a web interface called PovcalNet to make the information more accessible to a broader audience. This was a win. The PovcalNet estimates of income distributions across low-income countries are best-in-class, and should be eminently accessible to anyone. Still, as argued in this post from the Center for Global Development, the PovcalNet web interface does not suffice as an open and accessible portal. The CGD authors urge PovcalNet to:

Embrace open data standards. The PovcalNet website is great for many users. But for researchers who would like to seriously kick the tires behind the Bank’s calculations, it locks the data in an unnecessary straightjacket. Give us freely accessible, machine-readable files.

The objective of this endpoint is to convert PovcalNet into a REST API, readable from just about any machine or client-side program. This project has wrapped up the esoteric and terminal PovcalNet service into a simple interface that corresponds to modern web design. We have removed some of the complexity, noting that we have concurrently removed some of the rich features of PovcalNet. The objective is to get web developers the most reliable information in the simplest way possible about global poverty. As this project progresses, we can add in more options for power users, keeping the sensible defaults for casual users.

Documentation

The endpoint will calculate the number of people living below the supplied poverty line (2005 PPP $) for the supplied country for all available survey years. This web service exactly replicates the analysis found on the PovcalNet website, but restructures the response for broader web development and research.

Endpoint:

http://localhost:8080/povcal

parameter	type	example	notes
country	string	AUS	ISO3 country code
povline	float	1.95	Daily income (2005 PPP $)

Example:

http://localhost:8080/povcal?country=AUS&povline=1.9

{
    "count": 8, 
    "results": [
        {"impoverished": 149272, "year": 1981, "population": 14927000}, 
        {"impoverished": 157736, "year": 1985, "population": 15758000}, 
        {"impoverished": 113668, "year": 1989, "population": 16814400}, 
        {"impoverished": 242504, "year": 1995, "population": 18072000}, 
        {"impoverished": 261296, "year": 2001, "population": 19413000}, 
        {"impoverished": 269977, "year": 2003, "population": 19895400}, 
        {"impoverished": 141725, "year": 2008, "population": 21249200}, 
        {"impoverished": 147825, "year": 2010, "population": 22031800}
    ], 
    "poverty_line": 1.9, 
    "country": "AUS"
}