Conclusion
Rural electrification has expanded only slowly over time, with countries such as India still far from the goal after seven decades of programs and policies. One important consequence of this slow progress is that different rural communities have been electrified at very different times. Among the electrified villages in the ACCESS sample, for example, some villages were electrified as early as in 1956 while others had been electrified only months before the survey, in the fall of 2014. Here we have assessed the association between early electrification and the quality of electricity service. We have found that villages electrified early still enjoy better quality of service than those electrified recently, a result that holds after controlling for confounders such as village size and distance to nearest town. Our findings suggest that simply electrifying villages is insufficient for providing quality electrical service. Although increasing the electrification rate is important, greater attention needs to be paid to ensuring that newly electrified villages benefit from high quality service. We show that despite greater electrification rates in India, a gap still exists between villages that have been electrified recently and those electrified in the past. To close this gaps, policymakers should strive to provide newly electrified villages with the infrastructure necessary to match the quality of service present in villages electrified in the past.
