Poverty monitoring in crisis: better data beats smarter algorithms Nobuo YoshidaYusaku KawashimaShinya Takamatsu April 30, 2026 This page in: English © 2026 The World Bank Group,

https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/poverty-monitoring-in-crisis--better-data-beats-smarter-algorith When crises strike, policymakers need poverty data fast. But consumption surveys — the gold standard — are produced only once every seven years in low-income countries. Survey-to-survey (S2S) imputation offers a workaround: train on the most recent full survey, then score a short follow-up that collects 10–20 indicators. The result is a near-real-time poverty estimate at a fraction of the cost. © 2026 The World Bank Group,