Who Needs a Fracking Education? The Educational Response to Low-Skill Biased Technological Change / Elizabeth U. Cascio, Ayushi Narayan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cascio, Elizabeth U.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Narayan, Ayushi.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w21359.

NBER working paper series no. w21359

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2015.

Summary:

We explore the educational response to fracking, a recent technological breakthrough in the oil and gas industry, taking advantage of the timing of its diffusion and spatial variation in shale reserves. We show that fracking has significantly increased relative demand for less-educated male labor and high school dropout rates of male teens, both overall and relative to females. Our estimates imply that, absent fracking, the teen male dropout rate would have been 1 percentage point lower over 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 more among young men than teenage boys, suggesting that educational decisions respond to improved earnings prospects, not just opportunity costs. Other explanations for our findings, like changes in school quality, migration, or demographics, receive less empirical support.

Notes:

Print version record

July 2015.