Natural Resources and Education

Abstract

This chapter reviews the literature on the different channels through which abundant natural resources can influence education and human capital, including institutional arrangements exemplified by colonialism and rent seeking as well as several facets of social capital: democracy, Dutch disease, equality, justice, rule of law, transparency, and trust. The narrative presented features empirical cross-country evidence of the linkages from natural resources to education as well as from education to national income and also, for comparison, from natural resources via democracy to national income. If abundant natural resources attract colonialists and rent seekers, domestic or foreign, and if they create strife, which undermines social and cultural capital, including social cohesion, then economic logic and empirical evidence seem to suggest that education and human capital may suffer.