A decade of natural gas development: The makings of a resource curse?

•Each mining job related to natural gas production created more than one nonmining job.•Increases in population mitigated a rise in earnings per job and crowding out.•Gas production did not lead to a less educated population.

Many studies find that areas more dependent on natural resources grow more slowly – a relationship known as the resource curse. For counties in the south-central U.S., I find little evidence of an emerging curse from greater natural gas production in the 2000s. Each gas-related mining job created more than one nonmining job, indicating that counties did not become more dependent on mining as measured by employment. Increases in population largely mitigated a rise in earnings per job and crowding out. Furthermore, changes in the adult population by education level reveal that greater production did not lead to a less educated population.