Blue Collar Booms and American Mortality: Evidence from US Counties

Abstract

We exploit the positive labor demand shocks driven by the fracking boom to investigate whether a long-run increase in economic opportunities reduces deaths of despair. Within a difference-in-differences analysis using variation in geological characteristics amenable to fracking, we demonstrate that fracking produces a sizeable increase in earnings and employment, especially for prime-aged males, while deaths of despair decline for young men, driven by suicides. Our estimates imply that fracking led to a 14% decline in male suicides in boom counties. These findings are not driven by differential trends in mortality unrelated to the fracking boom or confounding factors like migration.