 Who Needs a Fracking Education? The Educational Response to Low-Skill-Biased Technological ChangeElizabeth Cascio and Ayushi Narayan ILR Review, 2022, vol. 75, issue 1, 56-89 Abstract: The authors explore the educational response to fracking—a recent technological breakthrough in the oil and gas industry—by taking advantage of the timing of its diffusion and spatial variation in shale reserves. They show that fracking has significantly increased relative demand for less-educated male labor and increased high school dropout rates of male teens, both overall and relative to females. Estimates imply that, absent fracking, the teen male dropout rate would have been 1 percentage point lower over the period 2011–15 in the average labor market with shale reserves, implying an elasticity of school enrollment with respect to earnings below historical estimates. Fracking increased earnings and job opportunities more among young men than male teenagers, suggesting that educational decisions respond to improved earnings prospects, not just opportunity costs. Other explanations for the findings, such as changes in school quality, migration, or demographics, receive less empirical support. Keywords: human capital; labor markets and school enrollment; skill-biased technical change; education; education wage gap (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:sae:ilrrev:v:75:y:2022:i:1:p:56-89 Access Statistics for this article More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School |
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