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Global Database of Light-based Geospatial Income Inequality (LGII) Measures, Version 1

Metadata Updated: August 22, 2025

The Global Database of Light-based Geospatial Income Inequality (LGII) Measures, Version 1 data set contains Gini-coefficients of inequality for 234 countries and territories from 1992 to 2013. The measurement Unit is the Gini-Coefficient (Range: 0-1), with higher values representing higher inequality. These measures are constructed using worldwide geospatial satellite data on nighttime lights emission as a proxy for economic prosperity, matched with varying sources of data on geo-located population counts. The nighttime lights data were supplied by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), Earth Observation Group (EOG), and Operational Linescan System (OLS) instruments. The population data used consisted of CIESIN's Gridded Population of the World (GPW) collection, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) LandScan (LSC) data set. The nighttime lights and population data were combined to produce an array of geospatially-informed Gini-coefficients, which were then weighted to optimize their correlation with a benchmark - specifically, the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID), to generate a parsimonious composite inequality metric.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date January 22, 2024
Metadata Updated Date August 22, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date January 22, 2024
Metadata Updated Date August 22, 2025
Publisher SEDAC
Maintainer
Identifier C2816246082-SEDAC
Data First Published 2023-12-11
Language en-US
Data Last Modified 2025-07-17
Category SPATIALECON, geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id b42a94ac-6649-49bc-903f-5d50abfd3e01
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -180.0 -90.0 180.0 90.0
Program Code 026:001
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 07e40a171495ef9d65ae3e375fc3e1fc43c98bd8c9e8624272011f9356da9837
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 1992-01-01T00:00:00Z/2013-12-31T00:00:00Z

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