Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

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Decision Support Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dss

Developing a contextual model of poverty prediction using data science and

analytics – The case of Shelby County
Brian Hoogstra a, Srikar Velichety b, *, Chen Zhang c
a
FedEX Services, USA
b
Fogelman College of Business and Economics, University of Memphis, Rm 309, 3675 Central Ave, Memphis, TN 38152, USA
c
Ivy College of Business, Iowa State University, 3438 Gerdin, Ames, IA 52761, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This study builds on the existing poverty literature and leverages data from disparate sources including both big
Poverty data sources such as satellite images and traditional data sources such as the federal, state, and local agencies to
Vector autoregression develop a context-specific poverty prediction model using design science. We examine whether and to what
Social network analysis
extent infrastructure development as measured from the satellite images as well as spatial spillovers helps predict
Ensemble modeling and design science
the poverty rate of a given census tract. We also develop and implement a Vector Autoregression (VAR) based
ensemble model that combines predictions from daytime and nighttime imaging with adjacent tracts’ poverty
rates and other economic and demographic factors identified in prior literature. Our results show that daytime
imaging and spatial network features have significant predictive value and that a combination of these features
gives the best predictive power. In addition, we find that the skewness of poverty rates among adjacent census
tracts, not the average, is a significant predictor showing the importance of distribution of poverty around a
region. Our work has major implications for researchers using deep learning and network analysis for policy
development and decision making.

1. Introduction
Poverty is a worldwide issue intertwined with other societal issues.
In the United States, the widening wealth and income gap between the
rich and poor in the past four decades has created acute economic and
social challenges for federal, state, and local governments [1]. To
effectively combat poverty, it is important not only to understand the
causes of poverty but also to predict poverty based on contextual and
regional factors (i.e., local demographic, geographic and economic
factors) at a granular level. Such knowledge can become the basis for
resource allocation decisions for state and local governments and policy
makers.
Although extant research has identified behavioral, structural, and
political causes of poverty, studies in this area tend to be disjointed and
have used data from surveys, experiments, and other traditional sources.
Furthermore, given that approaches towards poverty reduction are often
unique to their locales and demographics, there is a need for location-
specific models that can pinpoint factors influencing poverty in each
area. Finally, traditional data sources have issues like delay in data
acquisition and inability to capture dynamic data like changing
landscape and demographics. The advent of big data and data analytics
methods has made it possible for researchers to overcome these issues by
leveraging large-scale datasets such as daytime and nighttime satellite
images in poverty research [2–5]. However, prior studies tend to rely on
a single data source. There has been a lack of research integrating
diverse data from disparate sources to predict poverty rates. In sum­
mary, there is a need for innovative methods that can combine tradi­
tional data and big data to leverage the strengths of each.
In this research, we combine data from a variety of traditional and
big data sources to comprehensively identify context-specific features
that may be associated with poverty. We also develop a method to
extract more granular census-tract level features such as landscape
features and infrastructure development using daytime satellite images,
which have the potential to help us more accurately predict poverty.
Furthermore, based on prior poverty research, our study attempts to
quantify the spatial spillover effects among adjacent census tracts. Our
research objective is to investigate whether and to what extent land­
scape features and infrastructure development estimated from satellite
image data combined with spatial spillover effects helps predict the
poverty level in an area.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: bhogstra@memphis.edu (B. Hoogstra), svlchety@memphis.edu (S. Velichety), czhang1@iastate.edu (C. Zhang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2023.114080
Received 1 February 2023; Received in revised form 21 August 2023; Accepted 4 September 2023
Available online 9 September 2023
0167-9236/© 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
B. Hoogstra et al.
We use Shelby County in the state of Tennessee, in which Memphis is
the major city, as our research context. Given that Memphis is consis­
tently ranked in the five cities with highest poverty rates in the United
States, we choose this county as the appropriate context for our research.
Our unit of analysis is census tract, which is a more granular level of
analysis than most prior poverty studies. We quantify landscape fea­
tures, infrastructure, and urban development of a census tract using a
CNN-LSTM network on daytime census tract images, which not only
segregates different landscape features such as residential and industrial
neighborhoods, barren land, and forest areas, but also identifies tem­
poral changes to these features. In addition, we use the intensity of
nighttime images from a census tract as a proxy for economic activity. A
social network of adjacent census tracts is used to quantify the spatial
spillover effect on the poverty rate of a focal tract. We also propose and
implement a Vector Autoregression (VAR) based ensemble model that
combines poverty predictions from daytime images with features
derived from disparate data sources, which include Google Earth Engine
(GEE), property values and transaction prices from City Assessors Office
and Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), education, crime,
and demographic data from United States Census Bureau, school
catchment area information from Shelby County School districts.
Overall, our study leverages both satellite image data and traditional
data used in prior poverty research to develop a context-specific pre­
dictive model of poverty. The prediction models thus obtained outper­
form the existing models in predicting poverty rates.
The rest of the manuscript is organized as follows. In Section 2, we
provide an overview of the existing poverty literature and summarize
the recent studies that use big data and data science approaches to
predict poverty. In Section 3, we provide an overview of the design
science methodology used in this work and the steps in each phase of
research. In Section 4, we provide a comprehensive overview of various
data sources used in this research and the summary statistics. In Section
5, we provide details of how we formulated and extracted features from
various data sources, what aspects of poverty may be associated with
each feature, the details of the techniques used, and the computational
details of the infrastructure used to extract these features. In Section 6,
we describe the prediction models used and the results. In Section 7, we
identify the theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions of
this research as well as potential areas of future work that can build on
this study.
2. Literature review
2.1. Determinants and spatial spillover of poverty
By analyzing individual, regional, and country-level data collected
from surveys, case studies, and secondary sources such as the Census
Bureau, researchers have identified several behavioral, structural, and
political causes of poverty. Behavioral theories posit that poverty is high
in areas where people engage in counter-productive behaviors such as
conceiving children out of wedlock [6,7], not saving enough [8], low
education [9], borrowing high-cost debt from payday lenders [10], and
not having insurance [8]. Structural factors such as labor market op­
portunities, economic change, and residential segregation are associated
with macro and meso-level demographic and economic contexts
[10–12]. Structural theories focus on the interaction between contexts
like demographics, economy, etc. and individual behavior when
explaining the causes of poverty [13–15]. Political theories argue that
power and institutions impact government policy, which causes poverty
[11] and moderates the behavior-poverty link [16]. Nonetheless, each of
these three types of theories have their own challenges; they need to be
integrated coherently, with consideration to the investigation context,
to formulate more explicit theories about poverty [8].
An increasing body of research has identified the importance of
context-specific and place-based poverty reduction policies (e.g., [17]).
Gweshengwe and Hassan [18] especially highlight the context-specific
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Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080
nature of poverty and the need to consider the nature and severity of
poverty within local social, economic, spatial, and other contexts. Some
studies have focused on counties with persistently high levels of poverty
and assess the role of place-based economic development policy in these
areas [17].
One of the contextual factors that has been examined in poverty
research is neighboring areas’ poverty level. Weinberg [19] is one of the
first studies to find that geographical contiguity to a county with a high
poverty rate impacts the focal county’s poverty rate even after de­
mographic, labor-market, institutional, and financial factors are
controlled for. In other words, location does matter in poverty; there
exist “pockets of poverty” (Weinberg [19], p. 399). Recognizing the
presence of spatial dynamics in poverty reduction, economists have
developed spatial econometric models to predict changes in counties’
poverty rates. For instance, Goetz and Rupasingha [20] find that
changes in a focal county’s poverty are impacted by the poverty of its
neighboring counties. Due to the potential spatial aggregation bias
inherent in county-level data, Crandall and Weber [21] focus on poverty
spatial dynamics among census tracts, which are small statistical sub­
divisions with population ranging from 1200 to 8000 of a county.1 Their
findings confirm the presence of geographic spillovers in poverty
reduction.
From a policy standpoint, fighting poverty requires the ability to
predict where poverty will occur and how it may change over time. Such
knowledge can become the basis for resource allocation decisions for
state and local governments and policy makers. In the past decade, with
the advent of big data and data analytics methods, an increasing body of
research has focused on developing more accurate context-specific
poverty prediction models. There has been a growing emphasis on
adopting a data-driven approach when making policy decisions to
effectively fight poverty.
2.2. Satellite image data and poverty
With the increasing availability of satellite imagery data, researchers
in multiple disciplines such as computer science, economics, urban
development, and geography have leveraged such data in poverty
mapping and prediction.
The earliest known image data-driven approach in poverty research
leverages both nighttime and daytime images to identify image features
that can explain the variation in economic outcomes of local areas [2].
Recognizing the drawbacks of relying on nighttime light intensity alone
such as the inability to identify landscape features such as vegetation,
residential and commercial areas, roads, waterbodies etc., Jean et al. [3]
combined nighttime maps with high-resolution daytime satellite images
of five African countries and showed that a convolutional neural
network can explain up to 75% of variation in local-level economic
outcomes. Xie et al. [5] used a transfer learning approach to predict
nighttime light intensity with daytime imagery while simultaneously
learning landscape features. Blumenstock [2] used a similar approach of
combining daytime features with nighttime light intensity to predict
poverty rates. Another line of work in this area focuses on generating
poverty maps of a region using features identified from daytime imaging
[20,21].
Most of these studies adopt Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs),
a deep learning technique that has the capability to algorithmically
identify and classify objects in input images i.e., to find those objects
that are more associated with poverty levels [3,5]. However, to the best
of our knowledge, little research has used daytime imaging to identify
changes in landscape features across different time periods with respect
to infrastructure and urban development to predict poverty rates at the
census tract level. More importantly, we posit in our study that
combining CNNs with Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), a deep
1
https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/education/CensusTracts.pdf
B. Hoogstra et al.
learning technique designed to identify and predict patterns in
sequential data, has the potential to help us identify temporal changes to
infrastructure-related landscape features, which can serve as proxies of
local infrastructure development progress over time.
Furthermore, despite the rich body of poverty research, most studies
tend to rely on a single data source [22]. In this study, we propose to
combine the traditional sources of data on poverty, such as the Census
Bureau statistics on demographic and household characteristics, with
the more recent big-data related sources, such as the Google Satellite
Images, to comprehensively measure and select the features associated
with poverty. Combining such data has the potential to allow us to build
on existing poverty literature and develop a more comprehensive
context-specific and data-driven machine learning model to better pre­
dict changes in poverty in each area.
2.3. Research context
We use Shelby County in the state of Tennessee, in which Memphis is
the major city, as our research context. According to the 2020 American
Community Survey (ACS), the overall poverty rate for the City of
Memphis is 21.7% (ranked second among metropolitan areas with more
than one million population) compared with 16.8% in Shelby County,
13.9% in Tennessee, and 12.3% in the United States [23]. Fig. 1 shows
the incidence of poverty rates across various census tracts in Shelby
County in 2019. Nonetheless, in the context of Shelby County and other
metropolitan areas with high incidence of poverty, there is little known
context-specific research on poverty prediction using disparate data
sources including satellite images and traditional secondary data
sources.
3. Methodology
In this research, we propose to develop a prediction model for
poverty rates using context specific data from a variety of sources. We,
therefore, use the design science approach by Peffers et al. [24] for this
research. The various stages are shown in Fig. 2.
The problem is to devise a comprehensive context-specific model for
poverty prediction. The objective is to use a combination of satellite
images and traditional archival data to formulate measures for poverty
determinants using big-data analytics. In the design phase, we identify
relationship between landscape features, which are related to infra­
structure and urban development, and poverty rates using a combina­
tion of deep learning methods such as Convolutional Neural Networks
(CNN) and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). We also identify spatial
dynamics using adjacency data on census tracts. Finally, we combine
these features with features identified in prior literature that are related
to education attainment, crime, housing, family income, real estate
transactions, and minority population. In the demonstration phase, we
present a VAR based Ensemble model consisting of all the features
identified in the design phase to predict poverty. This model combines
predictions from daytime imaging with features from adjacent census
tracts, education attainment, crime count, family income and economic
factors to provide a partially interpretable ensemble model. In the
evaluation phase, we compare our model with the previous models that
use a subset of the features identified. We also identify the importance of
each of these factors and the robustness of the model to changes in the
data and techniques employed. Finally, in the communication phase, we
present the theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions of
this research. We also identify three potential areas of future work that
can build on this study.
4. Data description and feature engineering
The unit of analysis in our study is census tract. Shelby County had
231 census tracts during the period 2010–2018 (Census data are gath­
ered once a decade with 2010 being the latest in our dataset). We
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Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080
gathered data about these census tracts from a variety of sources
including Google Earth Engine, United States Census Bureau, Tennessee
Department of Transportation, and Shelby County Assessor’s Office for
the period 2010–2018. The target variable is the percentage of families
below poverty in a census tract, which is reported yearly by the United
States Census Bureau. The data sources for extracting the required fea­
tures are shown in Fig. 3. We define big data as sources where the files
have more than two million rows and contain non-numeric data such as
image and spatial data.
We extract the required features in three phases, which are described
in detail in the following subsections.
4.1. Phase 1 – extracting features from daytime and nighttime imaging
The first step in our data collection was to identify census tracts and
their shapes. The Census Bureau publishes the shape files for these tracts
every year. We identified 231 tracts in the Shelby County and loaded
their information into the Google Earth Engine (GEE).2
GEE presents a unique opportunity to download Satellite imagery
from multiple raster aggregate images. The challenge with these images
is that they are not inherently cloud free and must be pre-processed so
that clouds and cloud shadows can be removed before analysis. To do so,
GEE provides cloud cover bands, which allowed us to identify clouds
and cloud shadows with medium to high confidence. Pixels identified
were excluded from the aggregated data set. To ensure a full data set,
images were aggregated for each month and from three different raster
images, which were collected at a rate of two images per month.
Nighttime images were similarly gathered from GEE.
Fig. 4 shows the process of extracting features from daytime images
downloaded using Google Earth Engine. We used a ResNet50 Model
[25] with the output layer removed to produce output arrays after a
series of convolutions.
Applying Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to the daytime
satellite images of each census tract showed promising results. It helped
us identify distinctive landscape features (Appendix A shows the land­
scape features identified from a sample census tract image). We then
clustered all census tracts based on these landscape features such as
residential and industrial neighborhoods, forest area, and barren land.
We identified three clusters as the optimal number of clusters based on a
metric that combines separation and compactness of the clusters (Ap­
pendix A). Tracts with similar landscape features belong to the same
cluster consistently throughout our observation window. Furthermore,
given that the average poverty rate of the tracts belonging to each
cluster varies significantly among the three clusters (Figs. 5 and 6), we
coded these clusters as 0, 1, and 2 with 0 being the lowest poverty rate
cluster and 2 being the cluster with the highest poverty level. Census
tracts in the low poverty cluster tend to have well developed residential
and commercial areas and little barren land although some of them tend
to have substantial forest area. Census tracts in the medium poverty
cluster tend to have a mix of well-developed residential neighborhoods
with poorly constructed residential and commercial areas. Finally,
census tracts in the high poverty cluster tend to have a lot of barren land
or forest cover with poorly constructed residential and commercial
areas. We included the poverty cluster as a feature in our poverty pre­
diction model.
In addition, we adopted the Long Short-Term Memory model (LSTM)
[26–28], a type of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), to detect and
measure the temporal changes at the pixel level over a three-year span to
the landscape features of a tract that were identified from the CNN.
Widely used in applications such as predictive search and text genera­
tion, RNNs are often used to predict the next value in a sequence based
on dynamic evolving changes to the input data. In our processing of the
daytime images, the CNN segments different landscape features of the
2
https://earthengine.google.com/
B. Hoogstra et al. Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

Fig. 1. Poverty Rates in Shelby County.

census tract image while the LSTM detects temporal changes to these
features over a consecutive three-year period, which can be considered
as indicators of infrastructure and urban development. We then used
these temporal changes to predict the poverty rate of each tract. More
specifically, we divided the image of each census tract into chunks,
trained the LSTM on the sequential data for these chunks, and aggre­
gated the poverty predictions from these chunks by calculating their
average and skewness. Fig. 7 shows the results of training. The neural
network reaches a minimal validation error rate in less than three
hundred epochs. The poverty predictions from the CNN-LSTM neural

Fig. 2. Research Framework.

4
B. Hoogstra et al. Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

Fig. 3. Data Sources for Feature Extraction.

Fig. 4. Process for Day Time Image Feature Extraction.

5
B. Hoogstra et al.
Fig. 5. Box Plot of Poverty Clusters.
network model (i.e., from daytime image processing) were then
included as ensemble features in our final prediction model.
In summary, the CNN allowed us to extract landscape features of
each census tract and identify the poverty cluster the tract belongs to.
The LSTM, a type of RNN, enabled us to track the temporal progression
of the landscape features in a tract over a three-year span. The inte­
gration of these two methods yielded both the poverty cluster and the
poverty predictions from the CNN-LSTM neural network model, which
were included as ensemble features in our final prediction model.
For nighttime data, we again used images collected from Google
Earth Engine. We calculated the average and skewness [29–31] of
nighttime image pixel intensity, which can be used as a proxy for eco­
nomic activity, for each census tract. To execute these tasks, we used a
high-performance computing cluster with eight cores and four CPUs per
task that have a memory of 8 GB per CPU. In addition, we used two GPUs
per node to train the neural networks.
4.2. Phase 2 – extracting features from adjacency network data
Using the census tract shape files from the census bureau, we created
an adjacency network of census tracts where each tract is a node and has
a link to another tract if they share a border. For each tract, we then
calculated the average and the skewness of poverty rates of its adjacent
tracts from the previous year. These two features were used as poverty
predictors that represent spatial spillover effects for the focal tract in a
given year [29–31].
4.3. Phase 3 – extracting baseline features (demographic and crime
features)
We also included additional factors that have been found to impact
poverty in prior studies [2–5,32–35]. For example, we calculated the
Fig. 6. Poverty Clusters Across Years.
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Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080
number of high school graduates as a proxy for the educational attain­
ment in each tract. Most of the school districts intersect with only one
census tract. If a school district does intersect with more than one tract,
we use the census tract that intersects with it the most, which is iden­
tified by the intersecting method of shapely polygons [36]. Appendix A
provides more details about the algorithm we adopted to match the
school catchment area to a census tract.
In addition, we gathered housing data (both housing attributes and
transaction history) from the County Assessor’s office.3 The Department
of Transportation (TDOT)4 address database was used to find every
address in the County, which was then mapped to the corresponding
census tract based on its latitude and longitude. We collected the
average price per square foot and the number of residential properties
sold in each tract in the previous year. We also gathered crime count
data for all types of crimes for each census tract from the FBI Crime
Database,5 which provides details of each reported crime in a census
block for each year. We aggregated the count of these crimes by year.
Minority Percentage, Median Family Income and Owner Occupied Units
data were collected from the US Census Bureau. Table 1 shows a sum­
mary of the data collected.
5. Results
To predict the poverty rate of a census tract, we propose the use of
Vector Autoregression (VAR) based Ensemble model that combines
predictions from daytime and nighttime imaging with features from
adjacent tracts. Combining predictions from different models with these
features gives us a partially interpretable model. Vector Autoregressions
are used to model relationships between multiple time series in a dataset
where the theoretical nature of relationship among the variables is
either unspecified or not completely specified [37]. Given the temporal
nature of the data and the unspecified nature of theoretical relationships
among the predictors, we argue that this technique best suits our needs
to quantify and interpret the predictive power of each predictor (more
details about the development and implementation of the model are
presented in Appendix B). In addition, neural network methods such as
CNN and RNN can capture the spatial and temporal variation in image
data, so they would best suit our needs for dealing with census tract
images. In other words, we combine the best of neural network and
econometric methods (A comprehensive theoretical and empirical
comparison of both techniques is presented in Appendix C).
We used the first five years of data for training and the last three
years for testing. Table 2 shows the summarized results of our prediction
models on the testing dataset using the features extracted as described
earlier. Overall, we found that a lag of three periods (years) yielded the
best results in terms of FPE (Model fit statistics are provided in Appendix
B – Table B.1). We built four models. The first one is a baseline model
that uses features identified from prior poverty research and extracted in
phase 3 as described earlier. It also includes the poverty level of the focal
tract in the previous year. The second model adds nighttime intensity
features to the baseline model while the third one adds features
extracted from daytime image processing (i.e., poverty clusters and
poverty predictions based on temporal changes to landscape features) to
the second model. The final one combines all four groups of features by
adding spatial network features to the third model.
The model with only the baseline features (i.e., baseline model)
shows that all the economic features except the mean transaction price
and price per square foot have a significant predictive power. The
number of real estate transactions (i.e., the number of houses sold) has a
significant negative coefficient across all models, indicating that the
more the transactions, the lower the poverty rate in that census tract.
3
https://www.assessormelvinburgess.com/propertySearch
4
https://www.tn.gov/tdot.html
5
https://osf.io/zyaqn/
B. Hoogstra et al. Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

Fig. 7. Training Result for RNN.

Every one unit increase in the number of homes sold is associated with a
0.96% reduction in poverty rate. Crime Count has a significant positive
coefficient with every crime associated with a 0.225% increase in
poverty. In addition, the number of high school graduates (i.e., educa­
tion attainment) does not seem to have a significant predictive power
(not just in this model but across all four models). We attribute it to the
fact that graduates may move to different regions instead of staying in
the same census tract. This model has the lowest level of performance
among all four models, underscoring the importance of identifying
additional features to improve the predictive performance.
After adding features extracted from nighttime image data to the
baseline model (i.e., model 1), we find that both the average and the
skewness of nighttime intensity are significant. Every unit increase in
night time intensity is associated with a 0.03% decrease in poverty rate
while a similar increase in skewness is associated with a 0.66% increase.
In addition, we see a 1–2% reduction in all the error metrics compared
with the baseline model, suggesting the importance of leveraging
nighttime data as a proxy for economic activity in poverty prediction.
Results associated with model 2, which incorporates features
extracted from the CNN-LTSM neural network model using daytime
image data, show that all three features (i.e., Poverty Cluster, Average
Development Poverty Prediction, Skewness Development Poverty
Prediction) are significant predictors of poverty rate. The poverty cluster
is coded in reverse order of poverty level (i.e., clusters with the lowest
poverty rates have a smaller value). The positive signs and the signifi­
cance levels for the coefficients not only indicate the importance of
identifying landscape features in poverty prediction but also suggest that
census tracts with higher poverty rates tend to get even poorer over
time. In addition, both the average and skewness of poverty prediction
from daytime imaging are significant.
Overall, the model that uses a combination of all four groups of
features (i.e., model 3) gives the best predictive power as measured by
the four-error metrics. The mean squared error (MSE) drops by more
than 10% over the baseline model. In addition, we find that the skewness
of poverty rates across adjacent tracts, not the average, is significant,
showing that distribution of poverty rates of adjacent tracts plays a vital
role in determining the poverty level of a focal tract. Considering the
direction of coefficients, if poverty rates of adjacent tracts are more
unevenly distributed, the poverty rate of the focal tract is also likely to
be higher. These findings add new insights to our understanding of
poverty’s spatial spillover effects. Across all the models, previous period
poverty prediction and average development poverty prediction from
daytime imaging are significant, showing the value of using predictions
from multiple models (i.e., ensembles) in the final model.

Table 1
Descriptive Statistics.*
Average Median Minimum Maximum VIF

Dependent Variable
Families Below Poverty (Percentage) 16.6 12 0 66.3 2.51
Independent Variables
Poverty Cluster (Coded 0,1,2 with 0 being the lowest poverty) 1.84 2.0 0.44 2.0 2.03
Daytime Imaging Poverty Prediction 11.77 6.9 0 59.02 4.04
Nighttime Intensity 22.0 26.08 0.52 75.81 2.52
Adjacent Tract Poverty (Percentage) 12.06 7.14 0 61.4 2.04
High School Graduates 1884 285 0 38,130 3.09
Real Estate Transaction Count (Houses Sold) 34.21 19 1 380 1.6
Price Per Square Foot (USD) 64.9 55.22 2.19 176.2 2.11
Transaction Price (USD) 138,450.60 90,633.33 2400 594,334.72 1.98
Crime Count 1176 1275.29 0 6345 2.6
Minority Percentage 62.7 68.27 4.53 100 4.58
Median Family Income 62,694.75 55,402 0 189,444 2.58
Owner Occupied Units 1139.14 1049 29 3688 2.14
*
The data shown are average per census tract.

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B. Hoogstra et al. Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

Table 2
Results.
Baseline Model Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Education Attainment + Real Baseline + Nighttime Baseline+ Nighttime Baseline+ Nighttime+ Daytime+
Estate Intensity +Daytime Adjacency

0.101** 0.092* 0.092* 0.019**

Previous Period Poverty
(0.034) (0.045) (0.045) (0.053)
–0.03*** –0.03*** –0.01***
Average Nighttime Intensity
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000)
0.66*** 0.63*** 0.035**
Skewness Nighttime Intensity
(0.04) (0.04) (0.013)
1.68** 1.64**
Poverty Cluster
(0.01) (0.01)
Average Development Poverty 0.036** 0.021*
Prediction (0.058) (0.059)
Skewness Development Poverty 0.034** 0.038**
Prediction (0.033) (0.032)
0.000
Average Adjacent Tract Poverty
(0.000)
0.09*
Skewness Adjacent Tract Poverty
(0.014)
0.00 0.00 − 0.000 − 0.000
High School Graduates
(0.00) (0.00) (0.000). (0.000).
− 0.96* − 0.01* − 0.01* − 0.01*
Real Estate Transaction Count
(0.07) (0.00) (0.00) (0.000)
0.06 0.00 0.00 0.000
Mean Transaction Price (Homes)
(0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.000)
0.66* − 0.65** − 0.67** − 0.003
Skewness Transaction Price (Homes)
(0.06) (0.03) (0.03) (0.008)
− 0.03 0.04 0.04 − 0.000
Average Price Per Sqft
(0.000) (0.00) (0.00) (0.000)
− 0.06*** − 0.67* − 0.69* − 0.002
Skewness Price Per Sqft
(0.12) (0.03) (0.03) (0.022)
0.255*** 0.264** − 0.255 0.104***
Crime Count
(0.002) (0.01) (0.09) (0.001)
− 0.467*** − 0.315** − 0.467** − 0.48**
Minority Percentage
(0.03) (0.002) (0.02) (0.02)
− 0.339* − 0.282** − 0.339** − 0.326***
Median Family Income
(0.04) (0.004) (0.001) (0.003)
− 0.626* − 0.136** − 0.626** − 0.795*
Owner Occupied Units
(0.001) (0.006) (0.004) (0.004)
MSE 24.12 23 22.54 22.13
RMSE 4.91 4.79 4.74 4.705
MAPE 2.64 2.67 2.64 2.64
MAE 0.174 0.171 0.169 0.168

Significance level: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05.

6. Robustness checks
We performed three robustness checks on our predictive model.
First, using Forecast Error Variance Decomposition (FEVD) [38], we
checked whether any single variable (other than the lagged dependent
variable) has an outsized influence on the predictive power of the model.
Results showed that no variable accounted for more than 5% towards
the error variance (Table B.2 has the details of contribution of each
variable towards the forecast error variance).
Second, we checked the robustness of significant predictors in each
model. We used permutation feature importance [39], which measures
the contribution of a feature by randomly interchanging all the values of
a variable across rows, to assess the robustness of each significant var­
iable in each of the models. We found that all the significant variables
across models increase the error by at least 3%.
Third, we used the heteroskedasticity-and-autocorrelation (HAC)
consistent estimators of the variance-covariance matrix to overcome the
issue of serially correlated error terms across different periods. As a
result, the direction and significance of the coefficients was consistent
across all the three lagged periods.
7. Contributions and future research
In this research, we leveraged both satellite image data and
traditional data used in prior poverty research to develop a context-
specific predictive model of poverty in a county in the United States.
Data from these disparate sources allowed us to estimate features related
to local landscape features and infrastructure development as well as
spatial spillover factors, which may help us predict the changes in
poverty in this area. In addition, we proposed and demonstrated the
application of a VAR-based ensemble model that combines poverty
prediction from daytime imaging with other types of features. The
prediction models thus obtained outperform the existing models in
predicting poverty rates. In doing so, we have major theoretical, meth­
odological, and practical contributions.
7.1. Theoretical contributions
Theoretical work in this area has so far focused on behavioral, eco­
nomic, structural, and political determinants of poverty rates. The past
decade has seen more emphasis on using big data sources to fight
poverty. However, most studies tend to rely on a single source of data.
Our work combines the more traditional sources with publicly available
big data sources to identify key features in poverty prediction. We
propose a context specific model consisting of structural and economic
factors for poverty prediction using design science. We also quantify the
impact of spatial spillover effects on poverty in a focal area. Overall, our
study highlights the potential of developing overarching theoretical

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B. Hoogstra et al. Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

frameworks on the dynamics of poverty, which can be tested by and Census Bureau. Imaging data can be collected from Google Earth
leveraging big data and innovative analytical methods. Engine. The only change in data sources for another city is the high
school graduation data which is usually publicly available for most
7.2. Methodological contributions metropolitan areas. The data extraction and model building processes
can be replicated using Fig. 2. The computational requirements for
We have four major methodological contributions in this study. extracting the features include a high-performance computing cluster
First, we propose a method for combining Convolutional Neural with eight cores and four CPUs per task that have a memory of 8 GB per
Network (CNN) for identification and classification of landscape fea­ CPU.
tures with Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) for sequential development Recent years have seen explosion of data available to researchers and
to quantify infrastructure and urban development at the census tract policy makers [44]. Research in the information systems community has
level in relation to poverty rates. Using CNN, we were able to find focused on providing big data analytics and data science frameworks in
different landscape features such as residential and commercial zones, numerous areas including online communities [30,31,45], cyber secu­
forests, and barren land. Using RNN, we were able to track the devel­ rity [46,47], text mining [48], sales prediction [49], recommender
opment in a census tract, in relation to its poverty rate, and use it to systems [50,51], mobile design [52], targeted advertising [53] and
predict the poverty rates. This method can be replicated and used in crowdfunding [54]. Our study is a step forward in this direction that
other contexts to quantify infrastructure and urban development and focuses on the public policy and social works domains.
devise proper measures.
Second, we propose and implement a VAR-based Ensemble model
7.4. Future work
that combines predictions from daytime imaging with features related to
adjacent tract poverty rates and demographic features. The literature on
We identify the following potential areas of future work.
time series based ensemble models is sparse [40–42]. However, the
First, our research uses a dataset of eight years for a single county.
advent of big data has necessitated the need for such models. Recently,
Given that the metrics we used, and the neural networks trained can be
Velichety and Shrivastava [43] proposed and implemented a two stage
applied to other regions beyond our research context, a study consisting
Vector Autoregression model to quantify the impacts of fake news on
of similar data from multiple geographical regions will not only allow us
social media platforms. More recently, there has been a surge in the
to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of the contextual factors
usage of neural network-based models for time series prediction. How­
influencing poverty but also help customize our processes and metrics to
ever, these models can be complex to interpret because they involve
improve their generalizability.
multiple hidden layers and millions (or even billions) of parameters. On
Second, when using the spatial network measures to predict the
the other hand, econometric based time series methods can only handle
poverty rate of a focal census tract, we treat all neighboring census tracts
numeric data (A comprehensive comparison of the pros and cons of
equally. However, geographic proximity may not be the only factor
these methods is provided in Appendix C). In this research we identify a
impacting the connections between tracts, which may also be influenced
middle ground between the two by compromising only slightly on the
by neighborhood characteristics. Prior research has found that com­
interpretability. Our work in this research is a step forward in building
munities’ network is linked by their socioeconomic needs, despite the
partially interpretable models for time series data. In doing so, we also
geographical distance between them [55]. To take such complexity into
contribute to the literature on proposing novel methods using big data
consideration, future research may build dynamic graph neural net­
and design science [44].
works to capture temporal relationships between poverty levels of
Third, we use spatial measures to quantify the spatial spillover
census tracts and identify poverty co-movement among tracts, which
impact in poverty. We found that skewness of neighborhood tracts’
may or may not be adjacent to each other. The embeddings learnt from
poverty levels is significant in predicting the poverty rate of the focal
such networks can provide insights about the connections between
tract. The method of constructing spatial network based on neighbor­
census tracts beyond their geographical distance, which can further help
hood data and deriving metrics can be replicated by future researchers
improve predictive accuracy. Such a study can also contribute to the
working in this area.
wealth of theoretical and empirical literature on using network analyses
Fourth, we propose a customized algorithm using shapely polygons
to solve societal problems [56–58] and on applications of graph neural
to determine the common area between a census tract and a school
networks [45,59–63].
catchment area and assign a school district to a census tract. This al­
gorithm can be replicated efficiently to find common intersecting areas
CRediT author contribution statement
of any two geographies.

Brian Hoogstra: Conceptualization; Data Curation; Methodology.

7.3. Practical contributions
Our work provides an overarching framework for policy makers to
use multiple data sources effectively to combat poverty. We use a variety
of traditional and big data sources in our research to build efficient and
accurate predictive models. All our data sources are publicly accessible
and easily available for decision makers. Accurate and timely pre­
dictions of poverty rates at the census tract level can be extremely useful
for city officials in a variety of tasks including budget and resource al­
locations and timely interventions to prevent crime. In addition, we also
provide ways of combining traditional and big data resources in an
efficient way. The computational requirements for running our models
are minimal and are easily available to most of the city officials. Finally,
the models and frameworks proposed here can be easily customized and
replicated to predict poverty in other cities in the US. The baseline
features for all the models remain the same and can be collected from the
same sources i.e., Department of Transportation, FBI Crime Database
Srikar Velichety: Funding acquisition, Investigation, Project adminis­
tration, Validation. Chen Zhang: Writing – review & editing, Validation
Funding acquisition, Visualization.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal re­
lationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:
SRIKAR VELICHETY reports financial support was provided by the
FedEx Institute of Technology and the Fogelman College of Business and
Economics. Srikar Velichety reports a relationship with The University
of Memphis that includes: employment.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.

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B. Hoogstra et al. Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

Appendix A. Appendix

Fig. A1 shows the landscape of a census tract extracted from GEE while Figs. A2 and A3 show the results of clustering on this image after applying
the ResNet50 model [25]. We can see that the neural network is clearly able to identify and segregate different sections of the landscape including
residential neighborhoods, industrial warehouses, barren land, and dense forests.

Fig. A1. Original.

Fig. A2. 3 Clusters.

Fig. A3. 4 Clusters.

To determine the optimal value for number of clusters, for each value of k (ranging from 2 to 10), we first evaluated the quality of the clustering
results using evaluation functions proposed in [64] that measure the cluster compactness (Cmp), cluster separation (Sep), and combined measure of
overall cluster quality (Ocq). The definitions of these functions are given below.
1∑c v(Ci )
Cmp = (A.1)
c i v(X)

where C is the number of clusters generated by dataset X, v(Ci) is the standard deviation of the cluster Ci and v(X) is the standard deviation of the
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
∑ ̅
2
dataset X. v(X) = N1 N i=1 d (xi , μ) where d() is the Euclidean distance between two vectors, N is the number of members in X, and μ is the mean of X.
( ( ))
1 ∑c ∑ c
d2 xc i , xcj
Sep = exp − (A.2)
c(c − 1) i=1 j=1 j∕
=i
2σ2

( )
where C is the number of clusters, σ is the standard deviation of the dataset X, xci is the centroid of cluster ci, and d xci , xcj is the distance between the

10
B. Hoogstra et al. Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

centroids of ci and cj.

To calculate the overall quality of clusters obtained, we give equal importance to both Compactness (Cmp) and Separation (Sep) and calculate a
measure of overall quality as follows:
Ocq = 0.5*Cmp + 0.5*Sep (A.3)
The lower the value of Ocq, the better the quality of clusters.
Algorithm for finding and assigning school catchment area to a census tract:
Our algorithm takes the co-ordinates (latitude and longitude) of the nearest intersection edges of the school catchment areas. The catchment area is
approximated to the nearest shaped polygon.
After finding the area of intersection, which is in turn approximated to the nearest shaped polygon, the common intersection area is calculated.
This area is divided by the area of the largest overlapping census tract to determine the extent of overlap. In this way, we assign a school catchment
area to a single census tract. The pseudo code for the algorithm is shown below:
Initialize: - common_intersection ⟵ 0
Catchment_area ⟵ Nearest_polygon (Catchment_area)
CensusTract_area ⟵ Nearest_polygon (CensustTract_area)
Common_intersection_area⟵ intersection (Catchment_area, CensusTract_area)
Common_intersection ⟵ Nearest_polygon (Common_intersection_area)

Appendix B. Appendix
Table B.1
Model Fit Statistics.

Lag AIC HQ SC FPE

1 77.99 78.39 79.04 7435765 × 1027

2 77.13 77.91 79.17 3,145,216 × 1027
3 77.07 78.21 80.08 2,951,472 × 1027

Table B.2
Forecast Error Variance Decomposition.

Variable FEVD (%)

Poverty Cluster 0.65

Average Development Poverty Prediction 1.15
Skewness Development Poverty Prediction 1.78
Average Adjacent Tract Poverty 0.43
Skewness Adjacent Tract Poverty 1.80
High School Graduates 0.03
Crime Count 1.2
Median Family Income 0.15
Minority Percentage 1.65
Owner Occupied Units 0.74
Real Estate Transaction Count 0.41
Mean Transaction Price (Homes) 1.22
Skewness Transaction Price (Homes) 0.01
Average Price Per Sqft 0.43
Skewness Price Per Sqft 0.36
Average Nighttime Intensity 0.31
Skewness Nighttime Intensity 0.87

We propose a Vector Autoregression (VAR) based Ensemble model in this research. It combines poverty prediction from daytime imaging with
features related to poverty of adjacent census tracts and education attainment.
⎡ ⎤
⎢ ⎥
α1 + β 1 t ⎢ qk1,1 qk1,2 qk1,3 qk1,4 qk1,5 qk1,6 ⎥ e1t
⎛ ⎞ ⎡ ⎤ ⎢ ⎥ ⎛ ⎞ ⎡ ⎤
families below povertyit ⎢ ⎥ families below povertyik
α2 + β 2 t ⎢ qk2,1 qk2,2 qk2,3 qk2,4 qk2,5 qk2,6 ⎥ e2t
⎜ Average Development Predictionit ⎟ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎜ Average Development Predictionik ⎟ ⎢ ⎥
⎜ ⎟ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎜ ⎟ ⎢ ⎥
⎜ Adjacent Tract Poverty Ratesit ⎟ ⎢ α3 + β 3 t ⎥ ∑ ⎢
t− 3 qk3,1 qk3,2 qk3,3 qk3,4 qk3,5 qk3,6 ⎥ ⎜ Adjacent Tract Poverty Ratesik ⎟ ⎢ e3t ⎥
⎜ ⎟=⎢ ⎥+ ⎢ ⎥*⎜ ⎟+⎢ ⎥ (B.1)
⎜ Education Attainmentit ⎟ ⎢ α4 + β 4 t ⎥ ⎢ k k k k k k ⎥ ⎜
q4,1 q4,2 q4,3 q4,4 q4,5 q4,6 ⎥ ⎜ Education Attainmentik ⎟ ⎢ e4t ⎥
⎜ ⎟ ⎦ k=t− 1⎢ ⎟
⎝ Real Estate and Economic Featuresit ⎠ ⎣ ⎢ ⎥ ⎝ Real Estate and Economic Featuresik ⎠ ⎣ ⎦
α5 + β 5 t ⎢ qk5,1 qk5,2 qk5,3 qk5,4 qk5,5 qk5,6 ⎥ e5t
Crime Countit ⎢ ⎥ Crime Countik
⎢ ⎥
⎢ qk6,1 qk6,2 qk6,3 qk6,4 qk6,5 qk6,6 ⎥ e6t
α6 + β 6 t ⎣ ⎦

Where αi (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) = constant,βi ,qki,j (i, j = 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6)= Coefficients, K = lag length, ei (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) is the white-noise residual. The
ones in bold are predictions i.e., ensemble features while the ones in regular text are raw features.
To determine the lag order (K), we use Final Prediction Error (FPE). We found that the optimal lag was three. We test for various assumptions of
VAR including multivariate normality (MVN), co-integration of time series, autocorrelation, auto-regression conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH)

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B. Hoogstra et al. Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

and white noise residuals. Fig. B1 gives a pictorial representation.

T T+1

Fig. B1. Pictorial Representation of VAR-based Ensemble across two periods.

Appendix C. Theoretical and empirical comparison of VAR and NN

Table C.1 shows a theoretical comparison of Neural Networks and VAR based models for time series data on four unique dimensions identified
using the literature in both these areas [37,65–68].

Table C.1
Comparison of Neural Network and VAR Based Models.

Neural Networks VAR

Predictive Performance Excellent Moderate

Interpretability Poor Excellent
Explainability Poor Excellent
Computational Cost High Minimal

To compensate for the moderate predictive performance of VAR models, we propose using ensembles. Doing so can moderately decrease the
interpretability while improving the predictive performance to a large extent. Table C.2 compares the computational cost and predictive performance
of a Neural Network model with a combined Neural Network and VAR model. In our case, it is not possible to construct a pure VAR model because
some daytime features were derived using Neural Networks. We use an extreme learning machine (ELM) neural network for our time series prediction.
Computational Cost is calculated based on the time it takes to train the model. Table C.2 shows that combining neural networks and VAR results in a
substantial performance improvement across all the models while decreasing the computational cost.
In addition, Model 5 (using both poverty cluster based on spatial features from CNN and poverty prediction based on temporal features from LSTM)
outperforms Model 3 (using only poverty cluster based on spatial features from CNN) and Model 4 (using only poverty prediction based on temporal
features from LSTM) in model accuracy, demonstrating the strength of combining Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for identification and
classification of landscape features with Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) for quantify temporal changes to infrastructure and urban development
over time.

Table C.2
Computational Cost and Predictive Performance of Neural Network and VAR Models.

Computational Cost (In MSE RMSE MAPE MAE

Seconds)

Neural Network 1.600 64.40 8.02 0.050 0.240

Model 1 (Baseline Features) Neural Network
0.017 24.92 4.91 2.640 0.174
+VAR
Neural Network 1.660 49.50 7.04 0.047 0.210
Model 2 (Baseline + Nighttime) Neural Network
0.106 23.00 4.79 2.670 0.171
+VAR
Neural Network 2.110 53.13 7.30 0.051 0.234
Model 3 (Baseline + Nighttime + Poverty Cluster) Neural Network
0.080 22.47 4.74 2.660 0.169
+VAR
Neural Network 1.996 50.73 7.12 0.053 0.230
Model 4 (Baseline + Nighttime + Daytime landscape changes) Neural Network
0.110 24.23 4.92 2.630 0.174
+VAR
Neural Network 2.040 41.89 6.47 0.049 0.210
Model 5 (Baseline + Nighttime + Poverty Cluster + Daytime landscape
Neural Network
changes) 0.110 22.45 4.74 2.640 0.169
+VAR
Model 6 (All features) Neural Network 1.857 39.30 6.27 0.039 0.210
(continued on next page)

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B. Hoogstra et al. Decision Support Systems 177 (2024) 114080

Table C.2 (continued )

Computational Cost (In MSE RMSE MAPE MAE
Seconds)

Neural Network
0.130 22.13 4.71 2.640 0.168
+VAR

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[62] J. Shlomi, P. Battaglia, J.-R. Vlimant, Graph neural networks in particle physics, bachelor’s degree from Davenport University and a master’s degree from University of
Mach. Learn. Sci. Technol. 2 (2020), 021001. Memphis.
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on dynamic stock co-movement graphs for stock predictions, INFORMS J. Comput.
Srikar Velichety is an Assistant Professor of Business Information and Technology at the
34 (2022) 1940–1957.
Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis. Velichety got
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his PhD in Management Information Systems from the Eller College of Management,
algorithms: A review and comparative study, in: in: 2004 IEEE Int. Jt. Conf. On
University of Arizona in 2016. His research interests are in social media and Social Net­
Neural Netw, IEEE, 2004.
works, User Generated Content, Recommender Systems and Predictive Analytics. His
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research has been published in journals including JMIS, JAIS, IJIM and ACM SIGMIS
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DATABASE.
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Prepr. ArXiv171109784, 2017.
[67] C. Szegedy, W. Liu, Y. Jia, P. Sermanet, S. Reed, D. Anguelov, D. Erhan, Chen Zhang is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Ivy College of Business
V. Vanhoucke, A. Rabinovich, Going deeper with convolutions, in: Proc. IEEE Conf. at the Iowas State University. Prior to this, she was the associate dean of faculty and
Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit, 2015, pp. 1–9. administration at the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of
[68] A. Graves, A. Mohamed, G. Hinton, Speech recognition with deep recurrent neural Memphis. Zhang got her PhD in Management Information Systems from the Krannert
networks, in: 2013 IEEE Int. Conf. Acoust. Speech Signal Process, IEEE, 2013, School of Management at Purdue University in 2007. Her research interests are in software
pp. 6645–6649. platforms, User Generated Content and Sharing Economy. Here research has been pub­
lished in top journals including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, IEEE
Software and CAIS.
Brian Hoogstra is a Data Scientist Principal at FedEx Services, Memphis. He has wide
experience in database administration and enterprise content recovery. Brian has a

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