STUDY 04
Mapping Opportunity
"Building a map of the city from mobility data instead of income data."
PUBLISHEDData & Inequality2024
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Context
A study within the Data & Inequality area of Dr. Okafor's wider research on daily mobility and access to opportunity, conducted in Lagos, Abuja over Jan–Aug 2024.
The Question
QUESTION
"Can a map built from how people actually move reveal inequality that an income map misses?"
Hypothesis
HYPOTHESIS
A mobility-based access map will surface pockets of low opportunity that income data, aggregated at a coarser level, does not show.
Method
Data
Findings
Mobility-based access maps surface inequality that income data alone hides.
STRONG CONFIDENCEDataset
Sample
1,860 households
Method
Variable
variance in access explained: income-only vs. combined model
Observation
A model combining mobility and income data explained substantially more variance in reported access to opportunity than income data alone.
What We Know / What We Still Don't Know
WHAT WE KNOW
Mobility patterns carry independent information about inequality that income figures alone don't capture.
WHAT WE STILL DON'T KNOW
How far this holds outside the neighbourhoods sampled, and whether the pattern is stable year to year.