Disclosed herein is a technique for substantially preventing, in a power converter including a boost power factor correction section, the power factor correction section from starting an intermittent operation even if the ripple voltage of its smoothing capacitor has increased. The converter includes: a power factor correction section including a booster circuit boosting an input voltage supplied from a rectifier section and a smoothing capacitor smoothing an output of the booster circuit; and a control section correcting a power factor by controlling the booster circuit. The control section makes correction to the amount of boost of the booster circuit such that an output voltage of the smoothing capacitor does not become lower than the input voltage.