Using multiple linear regression and random forests to identify spatial poverty determinants in rural China

Identifying poverty determinants in a region is crucial for taking effective poverty reduction measures. This paper utilizes two variable importance analysis methods to identify the relative importance of different geographic factors to explain the spatial distribution of poverty: the Lindeman, Merenda, and Gold (LMG) method used in multiple linear regression (MLR) and variable importance used in random forest (RF) machine learning. A case study was conducted in Yunyang, a poverty-stricken county in China, to evaluate the performances of the two methods for identifying village-level poverty determinants. The results indicated that: (1) MLR and RF had similar explanation accuracy; (2) LMG and RF were consistent in the three main determinants of poverty; (3) LMG better identified the importance of variables that were highly related to poverty but correlated with other variables, while RF better identified the non-linear relationships between poverty and explanatory variables; (4) accessibility metrics are the most important variables influencing poverty in Yunyang and have a linear relationship with poverty. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.