[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-16-22-rev.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Lighting up the last mile: The bene ts and costs of extending electricity to the rural poor

Author

Listed:
  • Chakravorty, Ujjayant

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Emerick, Kyle

    (Department of Economics, Tufts University)

  • Ravago, Majah-Leah

    (University of the Philippines Diliman)

Abstract
Approximately one billion people live without access to electricity. However, there has been no study that rigorously estimates both the realized benefits and costs of electricity provision. In this paper, we document substantial short-run welfare gains from electricity expansion in the Philippines. We first project the expansion of the electricity grid under a least-cost first principle. Using this projected expansion as an instrument, we estimate large impacts of electricity infrastructure on household income and expenditures. We then use data on costs of electrifying individual villages to show that in a majority of cases, the physical cost of expanding electricity infrastructure is recovered after only a single year of realized expenditure gains. Finally, we find that electricity does not increase employment, suggesting that increased labor force participation is not the relevant mechanism. Rather, increases in agricultural income appear to account for a meaningful share of the income gains from electrification. These findings suggest that the benefits to rural electrification may be significantly high, even in the very short run.

Suggested Citation

  • Chakravorty, Ujjayant & Emerick, Kyle & Ravago, Majah-Leah, 2016. "Lighting up the last mile: The bene ts and costs of extending electricity to the rural poor," RFF Working Paper Series dp-16-22-rev, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-16-22-rev
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-16-22-REV.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gupta, Ridhima & Pelli, Martino, 2021. "Electrification and cooking fuel choice in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. Ujjayant Chakravorty & Ridhima Gupta & Martino Pelli, 2022. "The economics of rural energy use in developing countries," CIRANO Working Papers 2022s-12, CIRANO.
    3. Lewis, Joshua & Severnini, Edson, 2020. "Short- and long-run impacts of rural electrification: Evidence from the historical rollout of the U.S. power grid," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    4. Kenneth Lee & Edward Miguel & Catherine Wolfram, 2020. "Does Household Electrification Supercharge Economic Development?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 122-144, Winter.
    5. Kenneth Lee & Edward Miguel & Catherine Wolfram, 2016. "Experimental Evidence on the Demand for and Costs of Rural Electrification," NBER Working Papers 22292, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Litzow, Erin L. & Pattanayak, Subhrendu K. & Thinley, Tshering, 2019. "Returns to rural electrification: Evidence from Bhutan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 75-96.
    7. Miguel H. Fernandez-Fuentes & Andrea A. Eras-Almeida & Miguel A. Egido-Aguilera, 2021. "Characterization of Technological Innovations in Photovoltaic Rural Electrification, Based on the Experiences of Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina: Third Generation Solar Home Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-23, March.
    8. World Bank Group, "undated". "Africa's Pulse, No. 17, April 2018," World Bank Publications - Reports 29667, The World Bank Group.
    9. David Boisclair & Roxane Borgès Da Silva & Nathalie de Marcellis-Warin & Pierre-Carl Michaud & Ingrid Peignier, 2022. "Combien de personnes ont développé des symptômes ou contracté la Covid-19 au Québec ? Une étude exploratoire," CIRANO Working Papers 2022s-05, CIRANO.
    10. Raul Jimenez Mori, 2020. "Development Effects of Electrification: A Meta-Analysis for Income, Labor and Educational Outcomes," Documentos de Trabajo 18096, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).
    11. Deutschmann, Joshua W. & Postepska, Agnieszka & Sarr, Leopold, 2021. "Measuring willingness to pay for reliable electricity: Evidence from Senegal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-16-22-rev. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.