Across 189 countries, Electricity use per person and Regulatory quality rise and fall together at r = +0.61 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.20, which could easily be chance (q = 0.20, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things.
Comparing countries across the middle half of electricity use per person, 734 to 5,744 kWh per person, regulatory quality is better by 0.5 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.131 points.
Link before adjusting (r)+0.605p = 2.9e-20 · 189 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.200p = 0.006 · likely range [+0.06, +0.33]
p, allowing for regions0.063standard error 0.088 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.202across 13,797 pairs
How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.
Electricity use per person · kWh per personlink with income +0.93 · proxy
Regulatory quality · index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5)link with income +0.83 · proxy
Both of these rise and fall closely with national income, so a strong link between them before adjusting was close to certain. Read the adjusted figure, not the first one.
“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.
Every country as a dot
best-fit line line after adjusting
Four ways to measure the link
Method
r
p
Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted
+0.605
2.9e-20
189
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted
+0.771
2.0e-38
189
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income
+0.200
0.006
189
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income
-0.001
0.986
189
The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 189 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.405 (a minus sign means it grew).
How solid is it?
Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.179 (without GUY) to +0.223 (without ISL). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: ISL (+0.023).
Within each region
Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.
n
r
East Asia & Pacific
27
+0.04
Europe & Central Asia
50
+0.10
Latin America & Caribbean
35
+0.40
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan
22
+0.17
Sub-Saharan Africa
46
+0.24
By income third
If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.
n
r
Poorest third
63
-0.05
Middle third
63
-0.10
Richest third
63
+0.12
By largest religious group
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
n
r
Christians
110
+0.29
Muslims
50
+0.27
By last european coloniser
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
n
r
France
25
-0.03
Never a European colony
21
+0.31
Spain
19
+0.26
United Kingdom
62
+0.16
Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.280 after dropping 10 countries.
Two series, one country
Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.
Loading…
Over time, within countries
Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 29years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.
Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.045, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose electricity use per person moved did not tend to see their regulatory quality move with it.
Across countries (adjusted)+0.200for comparison
Within countries+0.070each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.045q = 0.733 · 198 countries
Year-on-year changes-0.000q = 0.994
Read with care.
Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.
4,738 country-years (one country in one year), 198 countries, 1996–2024, about 24 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 3% for Electricity use per person, 5% for Regulatory quality. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.
Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.
With one measure years behind the other
Same year (lag 0): +0.045. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.
The largest value on this curve (+0.10 at lag -6) is higher than the same-year one by 0.06. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 21 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.
The data
kWh per person
index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5)
Years
Iceland ISL
48,424
1.33
2024
Norway NOR
24,490
1.67
2025, 2024
Bahrain BHR
23,919
0.95
2024
Kuwait KWT
18,402
0.404
2025, 2024
Qatar QAT
18,030
0.966
2025, 2024
Canada CAN
16,090
1.36
2025, 2024
United Arab Emirates ARE
16,053
1.13
2024
Bhutan BTN
15,742
-0.0913
2024
Finland FIN
15,610
1.96
2025, 2024
Saudi Arabia SAU
13,385
0.71
2024
United States USA
13,061
1.35
2025, 2024
Sweden SWE
12,866
1.67
2025, 2024
Korea, Rep. KOR
12,090
1.01
2025, 2024
Brunei Darussalam BRN
12,016
0.887
2024
Greenland GRL
10,740
1.5
2024
Ember, Yearly Electricity Data; population from Our World in Data, with processing by Our World in Data Kaufmann, D. and A. Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators, World Bank
Ember · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual
All the electricity a country uses in a year, divided by its population, in kilowatt-hours (kWh). One kWh runs a 100-watt bulb for ten hours. It counts the power made at home plus imports, minus exports, including the power lost in wires along the way. So it is a little higher than "consumption" figures that leave those losses out. Use per person ranges from under 100 kWh a year in parts of Africa to over 50,000 in Iceland, where aluminium smelters use most of it, so a few industries can set a small country's figure. It rises steeply with income, and is measured in percentage terms (on a log scale) where it is used for adjusting. No "better" direction is set: more electricity can mean more comfort and industry, or more waste.
Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2022–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 13,797 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Electricity use per person and Regulatory quality
This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Electricity use per person changes Regulatory quality, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.
More links with Electricity use per person or Regulatory quality