Impact of oil and gas boom and busts on working-age mortality in the U.S.

Background: The oil and gas sector is prone to boom-and-bust cycles that create precarious employment conditions, social disruptions, and environmental stressors, which could impact working-age mortality (i.e., premature death between 25 and 64 years old). Methods: We evaluated the association between booms and busts from oil and gas development with respect to working-age mortality. Using integrated county-level oil and gas production data with mortality records (2000–2011), we implemented a two-way fixed effects spatial lag of X (i.e., SLX) Poisson regression model, accounting for county-specific trends. We also estimated a distributed lag model to test for long-run effects after the initial shock. Results: We find stronger evidence that busts, rather than booms, in oil and gas production are associated with increases in all-cause working-age mortality. The average production bust yielded 0.4 additional deaths per county (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.1, 0.6). While rarer, extreme production busts were associated with as many as 19.5 additional deaths per county (95% CI: 6.7, 32.3). These findings suggest that an average, country-wide oil and gas bust event would result in 439 additional working age deaths across the U.S. (95% CI: 165, 714). In the cause-specific analyses, more complex associations emerge regarding the influence of the boom and the bust exposures on working-age mortality, including substantial variation in effect magnitude and directionality by specific causes. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the complexity in the association between boom-and-bust cycles with respect to working-age mortality in the U.S., providing many avenues for future work.