The Impact of Oil and Gas Job Opportunities on Long Term Human Capital

I exploit the geographic distribution of oil and gas resources to estimate how oil and gas jobs affect college enrollment and later life work outcomes. In the short term, a one standard deviation (equivalent to around 25 percentage points) rise in oil and gas labour share leads to a 1.7-2.8 percentage point decline in enrollment for men but not women, with effects concentrated among part-time enrollees. In the long term, leaving school to work early leads to permanent declines in formal human capital and work-related health. There is some evidence of positive impacts on employment and negative impacts on earnings. This paper contributes to 1) the literature studying how transitory industry shocks influence human capital over the lifecycle and 2) the literature that examines gender differences in college enrollment.