Introduced at the end of the 1970s to study the impacts of structural changes on electricity consumption by industry, index decomposition analysis techniques have been extended to various other areas to help in the formulation of energy policies, notably in developed countries. However, few authors have applied these techniques to study the evolution of energy consumption in developing countries. In Brazil, the few available studies have focused only on the industrial sector. In this article, we apply the decomposition technique called the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) to electricity consumption of the Brazilian residential sector, to explain its evolution in terms of the activity, structure and intensity affects, over the period from 1980 to 2007. The technique is sufficiently robust and flexible to perform this analysis, by disaggregating residential consumers by consumption classes and regions of the country. Among the main results is measurement of the impact of government programs for income transfer and universal service on variations in residential consumption, typical of developing countries. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.