Oil rents and educational inequality: new cross-country evidence

Soran Mohtadi and Mohammad Reza Farzanegan

Chapter 7 in Elgar Companion on Inequality and Natural Resources, 2026, pp 127-156 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The Resource Curse hypothesis posits that resource-rich countries, particularly those dependent on oil, tend to experience lower economic growth rates compared to resource-poor nations. Our study contributes to this literature by providing empirical evidence of a new transmission channel of the Resource Curse: the long-term increasing impact of oil rents dependency on educational inequality. Analyzing cross-sectional data averaged over the period of 1960–2015 from 141 countries, we find that countries with higher dependency on oil rents exhibit greater levels of educational inequality, measured by the educational inequality Gini coefficient. This effect remains robust even after controlling for various other factors. The analysis also reveals that the quality of governance plays a crucial moderating role. Our study reveals and supports the existence of a channel through which the Resource Curse manifests itself in the long term, perpetuates inequality, and hinders progress toward sustainable development.

Keywords: Resource Curse; Oil Rents; Education; Inequality; Economic Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035327362
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035327379.00013 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23071_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().