Technology, Institution, and Regional Growth: Evidence from Mineral Mining Industry in Industrializing Japan

Coal mining was an influential economic activity in interwar Japan. Initially, coal mines employed both men and women in the pits. However, the introduction of labor-saving technologies and the modernization of traditional extraction methods induced institutional change, manifested in the revision of labor regulations affecting female miners in the early 1930s. This dramatically changed the mining workplace, making skilled men the principal underground miners. This paper investigates the impact of coal mining on regional growth and assesses how institutional changes induced by the amended labor regulations affected this growth process. By linking the mines' location information with both registration- and census-based statistics, I find that coal mines led to remarkable population growth, and that fertility rates increased following the labor regulations that removed female miners from the workforce. While occupational hazards increased early-life mortality via the mortality selection mechanism, the effect of the regulations on mortality reduction remains unclear.