IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v57y2022i3p918-955.html

Moving to Economic Opportunity: The Migration Response to the Fracking Boom

Author

Listed:
  • Riley Wilson

Abstract

Exploiting positive labor market shocks from localized “fracking” booms, I estimate that fracking increased migration to impacted areas, but there is significant heterogeneity across both demographics and regions. Migrants to fracking areas were more likely to be male, unmarried, young, and less educated than movers more generally. These local booms increased in-migration rates to North Dakota fracking counties by nearly twice as much as other fracking areas. Differences across geography in labor market impacts, commuting behavior, initial population characteristics, or nonlinearities only partially explained this gap. There is evidence that heterogeneous information flows might be playing a role.

Suggested Citation

  • Riley Wilson, 2022. "Moving to Economic Opportunity: The Migration Response to the Fracking Boom," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(3), pages 918-955.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:57:y:2022:i:3:p:918-955
    Note: DOI: 10.3368/jhr.57.3.0817-8989R2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jhr.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/57/3/918
    Download Restriction: A subscription is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Han, Luyi & Winters, John & Betz, Michael, 2026. "Do Prior Residents Benefit from Energy Booms?," IZA Discussion Papers 18466, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Rodríguez-Puello, Gabriel & Rickardsson, Jonna, 2024. "Spatial Diffusion of Economic Shocks in the Labor Market: Evidence from a Mining Boom and Bust," OSF Preprints tzmf2, Center for Open Science.
    3. Patrick Bennett & Kjell Salvanes, 2024. "Changing patterns of inequality in Norway: the roles of gender, education, immigration and unions," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(2), pages 205-224, June.
    4. Sean Bassler & Kevin Rinz & David Wasser & Abigail Wozniak, 2026. "A Shock by Any Other Name? Reconsidering the Impacts of Local Demand Shocks," Working Papers 26-10, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    5. Giulia Bettin & Silvia Mattiozzi, 2025. "These jobs are going, and they ain't coming back: internal mobility in response to manufacturing decline," Working Papers 501, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    6. Lindequist, David & Selent, Samuel, 2025. "Did shale gas green the U.S. economy?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    7. Elaine L. Hill, 2024. "The Impact of Oil and Gas Extraction on Infant Health," American Journal of Health Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(1), pages 68-96.
    8. Katovich, Erik S., 2024. "Winning and losing the resource lottery: Governance after uncertain oil discoveries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    9. Friederike Seifert, 2025. "The asymmetric effect of US local oil and gas reliance on income inequality in the fracking era," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 23(4), pages 1283-1308, December.
    10. Parra-Cely, Sergio & Zanoni, Wladimir, 2024. "The Labor Market Worsening Effects of a Resource Bust: Evidence from the Crude Oil Price Shock in Ecuador," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    11. Bekhtiar, Karim, 2024. "Robotization, Internal Migration and Rural Decline," VfS Annual Conference 2024 (Berlin): Upcoming Labor Market Challenges 302396, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    12. repec:osf:osfxxx:tzmf2_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Lyu, Zhuoyang & Li, Zhengsheng & Yu, Li & Jiang, Yue, 2025. "Bad news travels fast: Extreme rainfall, migration networks, and migration," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    14. Brox, Enzo & Krieger, Tommy, 2025. "Far-right mass protests and their effects on internal migration," ZEW Discussion Papers 25-045, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • Q33 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Resource Booms (Dutch Disease)
    • Q35 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Hydrocarbon Resources
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • R2 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:57:y:2022:i:3:p:918-955. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://jhr.uwpress.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.