Mining Booms and Busts: New Evidence on the Consequences of Mining in the U.S.

Abstract

The extraction of natural resources can lead to higher incomes and standards of living for local areas, but resource exploitation, a lack of broad economic development, and an excess amount of environmental pollution can come with this activity. This dissertation analyzes the short and long run economic, public health, and demographic consequences of economic development via natural resources. It expands upon the current non-renewable resource extraction, "resource curse," and local community health literatures by using county data for the entire U.S. spanning over a century, capturing both short and long run impacts over various time periods, on net-migration, mortality, natality, local economic activity, and environmental impacts. What drove coal production in the U.S. during the twentieth century? How effective were the operators at predicting and responding to changes in price? Did coal mining industries provide broad economic benefits to local communities in non-mining sectors? Did the impacts differ over time? Has natural resource extraction activity caused mortality in the area to increase? To answer these questions I collected, compiled, and digitized a long run panel database of county level mining activity, mortality, natality, and pollution spanning the entire U.S. The dissertation identifies the short and long run net effects of natural resource extraction activity with time-varying measures, and an IV approach that isolates changes in local mining activity independent of local conditions and outcomes. The dissertation shows that coal producers responded to variation in prices, and were aware and responded to past price behavior. Chapter 3 shows increased levels of coal production had positive net impacts on county population and manufacturing employment over an initial ten year span, then became negative over the subsequent decade. This provides evidence that the existence of a "resource curse" on local manufacturing is a long run phenomena. Chapter 4 shows that extraction activity increased infant and total mortality, had no impact on contemporaneous total cancer mortality, and may be driven by areas where coal mining was historically prevalent. Past and present mining activity is strongly related to local pollution, supporting the idea that increasing local environmental pollution increases mortality.