Evaluation and Analysis of Poverty-Stricken Counties under the Framework of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: A Case Study of Hunan Province, China

Abstract

Eliminating all forms of poverty in the world is the first United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Developing a scientific and feasible method for monitoring and evaluating local poverty is important for the implementation of the SDG agenda. Based on the 2030 United Nations SDGs, in this paper, a quantitative evaluation model is built and applied to all poverty-stricken counties in Hunan Province. First, based on the SDG global index framework and local index system of China, a local SDG index system for poverty-related goals is designed, and the weights of the indexes are derived using an entropy method. The scores obtained for counties and districts with data available are then taken as the true value for the poverty assessment. Second, using National Polar-orbiting Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) nighttime light images and land use and digital elevation model data, six factors, including socioeconomic, land cover, terrain and traffic factors, are extracted. Third, we then construct multiple linear evaluation models of poverty targets defined by the SDGs and machine learning evaluation models, including regression trees, support vector machines, Gaussian process regressions and ensemble trees. Last, combined with statistical data of poverty-stricken counties in Hunan Province, model validation and accuracy evaluation are carried out. The results show that the R2 and relative error of the localized, multiple linear evaluation model, including all six factors, are 0.76 and 19.12%, respectively. The poverty-stricken counties in Hunan Province were spatially aggregated and distributed mainly in the southeastern and northwestern regions. The proposed method for regional poverty assessment based on multisource geographic data provides an effective poverty monitoring reference scheme for the implementation of the poverty eradication goals in the 2030 agenda.

Early Warning of Poverty Returning against the Background of Rural Revitalization: A Case Study of Two Counties in Guangxi Province, China

“…This article employed two counties in ethnic minority areas of Guangxi as the research objects and set up a poverty-return monitoring survey questionnaire from five dimensions based on the sustainable livelihood framework theory. This theory has been applied in the field of poverty-return monitoring for a long time and has high feasibility [48][49][50]. Farmer data from multiple villages in two counties were collected.…”

Assessing the Stability of Poverty Alleviation from a Household Economic Perspectives

“…Therefore, on the basis of relevant previous studies [24], the current study focuses on regional poverty alleviation stability and farmers' poverty alleviation stability. Attention is also paid to internal and external factor disturbances and potential risk shocks in the system of poverty alleviation stability.…”

Poverty Estimation Using a ConvLSTM-Based Model With Multisource Remote Sensing Data: A Case Study in Nigeria

“…Studies utilizing multiple data sources have achieved more accurate poverty assessments than those using only NTL data [40]. In current poverty assessment, NTL data [41] is often combined with other data such as land cover data [39,42], NDVI [43,44], Google Earth imagery [17,45], and DEM [40,42] to enhance the accuracy of the assessment.…”