13 min listen
S1 Ep45: Should electricity be a right? Evidence from India
S1 Ep45: Should electricity be a right? Evidence from India
ratings:
Length:
13 minutes
Released:
Nov 25, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Nearly a billion people around the world are not connected to the electricity grid, and even more have unreliable access. In this VoxDevTalk, Robin Burgess discusses his paper with Michael Greenstone, Nicholas Ryan, and Anant Sudarshan in which the authors argue that a social norm that all people deserve access to electricity regardless of payment may actually be undermining the universal access called for in Sustainable Development Goal 7. When people feel no compulsion to pay for the electricity they use, whether or not they are able to, government-owned distribution companies need to ration supply to limit their losses, either by enforcing blackouts or restricting access. This tends to affect those living in the poorer areas of countries more, and research on the relationship between electricity consumption and GDP suggests that it also has a macro impact on economic growth. One possible way to move from this low-payment, low-access equilibrium to a high-payment, high-access one is for governments to provide targeted subsidies towards getting connected to the grid, and for people to then pay for the electricity they use.
Released:
Nov 25, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
S1 Ep1: Paving a path to financial well-being: Tavneet Suri tells Tim Phillips about the rise of digital credit in Kenya. Who receives digital loans? What the loans are used for? How do they affects the lives of Kenyan people? [Read more about digital credit on VoxDev](https://voxdev.org/topic/f... by VoxDev Development Economics