Evaluation of county-level poverty alleviation progress by deep learning and satellite observations

Poverty alleviation is one of the greatest challenges faced by low-income and middle-income countries. China, which had largest rural poverty-stricken population, has made tremendous efforts in alleviating poverty especially since implementation targeted (TPA) policy 2014, 2020, all national counties (NPCs) have been out poverty. This study combines deep learning with multiple satellite datasets to estimate county-level economic development from 2008 2019 assess effect TPA for 592 at country, provincial county levels. Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) used measure affluence level. From 2014 through 2019, NPCs experience an average growth rate per GDP 7.6%±0.4%, higher than 310 adjacent non-NPC (7.3%±0.4%) whole country (6.3%). We also reveal 42 weak recently that level still much lower or averages. The inexpensive, timely accurate method proposed here can be applied other countries assessment.