Population statistics

A broad range of policy questions are dependent on a robust understanding of how people are distributed across a country or region and how they move between different areas.

CDR data can help decision makers better understand the distribution of a population and how it changes over time, providing important insights such as the requirements for services and infrastructure and the labour available in an area. This is especially relevant in the context of development as internal migrants may be more likely to be marginalised or lack access to resources and services.

Areas with large fluctuations in the number of people staying in the area, for example due to seasonal migrations, can experience large variations in the demands on infrastructure and services.

CDR data can be used to monitor variations in population distribution which may put pressure on infrastructure and services or even predict demand. In Senegal, CDR data has been shown to predict electricity demand and could be used to estimate consumption and peak demand in an area. CDR data could similarly be used to assess the variation in demand for other utilities, as well as government and public health services.

Up-to-date information on the number of people living in an area and how this varies over time also has important implications for labour markets, and therefore labour strategy and policies.

CDR data can be used to help generate useful labour market indicators. This is particularly useful in areas with substantial seasonal migration for work, for example in response to seasonal demands for workers in the agricultural or tourism industries.

CDR data can also be used to study unemployment, if it contains additional features which provide social and financial information (i.e. an identifier of the other subscriber in a call or SMS event, mobile top-up and expenditure data, mobile money data). Sundsøy et al. demonstrated that subscribers’ employment status can be predicted from CDR data, which when aggregated with many subscribers and anonymised can be used to generate labour market indicators. Furthermore, this method could be used to study other categories of employment such as teachers and students or the retired, albeit with lower accuracy.

By providing a better understanding of how people are distributed across a country, CDR data can also help increase the efficiency of government administration.

CDR data can support the planning of censuses and surveys, further improving policy-makers’ access to information to support decision-making. CDR data is especially useful for surveying specific groups within a population based on their mobility patterns, such as nomadic groups or seasonal workers.