Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/71712 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 7226
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
The extent to which local communities benefit from commodity booms has been subject to wide but inconclusive investigations. This paper draws from a new district-level database to investigate the local impact on socioeconomic outcomes of mining activity in Peru, which grew almost twentyfold in the last two decades. We find evidence that producing districts have better average living standards than otherwise similar districts: larger household consumption, lower poverty rate, and higher literacy. However, the positive impacts from mining decrease significantly with administrative and geographic distance from the mine, while district-level consumption inequality increases in all districts belonging to a producing province. The inequalizing impact of mining activity, both across and within districts, may explain part of the current social discontent with mining activities in the country, even despite its enormous revenues.
Subjects: 
natural resource curse
poverty
inequality
living standards
JEL: 
D7
H7
O1
Q3
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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