Contents -- Abbreviations -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- Executive Summary -- Chairperson's Summary: Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) -- 1 Introduction -- The Shifting Rationale and Returns to Lending for Rural Electrification -- Evaluation Questions -- The Study Approach -- 2 World Bank Lending for Rural Electrification -- The Bank's Evolving Energy Strategy -- The Portfolio -- Objectives -- Project Design: Analysis of Components -- Outputs and Outcomes -- 3 Who Benefits from Rural Electrification? -- The Distribution of Electrification -- Which Communities Get Electricity? -- Which Households Get Electricity? -- The Distribution of Benefits from Electrification -- Concluding Comment -- 4 What Is Electricity Used for in Rural Areas? -- What Types of Connection Are There? -- Domestic Uses of Electricity -- Community Uses -- Productive Uses -- 5 The Benefits of Rural Electrification -- Domestic Uses: Lighting and TV -- Health Benefits -- Time Use -- Education Benefits -- Productive Uses -- Global Benefits -- Adding Up the Benefits -- How Do the Benefits Compare with the Costs? -- Off-Grid Connections -- 6 Conclusion and Lessons Learned -- Answering the Evaluation Questions -- Lessons Learned -- Appendixes -- A: Rural Electrification Portfolio -- B: Statistical Overview of Portfolio -- C: Distributional Analysis of Rural Electrification -- D: Uses of Electricity -- E: Literature Survey -- F: Impact of Rural Electrification on Microenterprise -- G: Health and Education -- H: Calculating Consumer Surplus -- I: Evaluation Approach Paper -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Box 3.1 Successful RE through a Multisectoral CDD Project -- Box 3.2 Selection of Projects under the Peru Rural Electrification Project -- Box 3.3 Chile Rural Electrification Fund -- Box 3.4 India's Experience with the Single Point Light Connection Scheme: Kutir Jyoti.

Box 3.5 Overcoming the Connection Cost Barrier -- Box 3.6 Poor Communication of Tariff Structures Can Disadvantage the Poor -- Box 4.1 The Cold Chain -- Box 4.2 Electrification and Worker Absenteeism in the Social Sector -- Box 5.1 Shedding Light on Lumens -- Box 5.2 The Health Risk of Candles -- Box 5.3 Micro Home Enterprises -- Box 5.4 Technical Problems Reduce the Benefits from Off-Grid Investments -- Figure 2.1 A Growing Number of Rural Electrification Projects Are in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa -- Figure 2.2 Increased Energy Supply and Institutional Development Account for the Largest Share of Objectives -- Figure 2.3 Gender Issues Are Increasingly Taken into Account but Still Affect the Design of Only a Minority of Energy Projects -- Figure 3.1 Pattern of Electrification Favors the Non-Poor, but This Bias Generally Reduces over Time as Electrification Coverage Expands -- Figure 3.2 Share of Poor of On-Grid Electricity Consumption Is Low -- Figure 3.3 A Large Proportion of Households Connect to the Grid Immediately after It Becomes Available . . . But Some Remain Unconnected after Many Years -- Figure 4.1 The Energy Ladder -- Figure 4.2 Nearly All Projects Provide Residential Connections, but also Other Connections for Productive Purposes -- Figure 4.3 Pattern of Consumption in Rural Households (Distribution Total kWh) -- Figure 5.1 Consumer Surplus -- Figure 5.2 Producer Surplus -- Figure 5.3 Willingness to Pay Exceeds Supply Cost -- Table 3.1 Relative Price of Grid, Off-Grid, and Kerosene (/kWh) for Selected Countries -- Table 5.1 Willingness to Pay Calculation for Lighting -- Table 5.2 Willingness to Pay Calculation for TV -- Table 5.3 Fertility Impact of Electrification -- Table 5.4 Hours Watching TV by Electrification Status -- Table 5.5 Rural Electrification Benefits (US per Household per Month).