 Natural resources and education outcomes in the United StatesResource and Energy Economics, 2017, vol. 49, issue C, 150-164 Abstract: Existing development literature has argued that natural-resource endowments “curse” economic prosperity by reducing expenditures on education. According to this theory, public and private agents lack sufficient foresight to make optimal economic decisions and become poor as a result. Using a panel of U.S. state-level data, this paper offers evidence to the contrary. Public spending on education in resource-rich states greatly exceeds that in resource-scarce ones, and private education services are imperfectly crowded out as a result. Analyzing a broader set of public education outcomes reveals that relative teacher salaries, public enrollment rates, and teacher–student ratios tend to move pro-cyclically with resource booms and busts. Weaker evidence is provided that graduation rates fall in response to resource booms, perhaps reflecting a rise in the opportunity cost of going to school for working-age students. Keywords: Natural resources; Education expenditures; Education attainment; Resource curse (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:resene:v:49:y:2017:i:c:p:150-164 DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2017.04.004 Access Statistics for this article Resource and Energy Economics is currently edited by J. F. Shogren and S. Smulders More articles in Resource and Energy Economics from Elsevier |
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