For the past decade, extracting natural gas has been a hot topic and economic boon for many communities in the Marcellus Shale region, which stretches from south central New York to West Virginia. In June, Associate Professor of Sociology and Demography Dr. Molly Martin and an interdisciplinary team of researchers received funding to study the “mailbox money” going to Pennsylvania families from Marcellus Shale lease and royalty payments, and how the money affects child well-being.
The research team will integrate data on children and their families living in Pennsylvania and New York school districts to see whether income can affect perinatal health outcomes, academic proficiency, obesity, teen pregnancy, high school graduation, and juvenile delinquency. The Russell Sage Foundation is funding the grant, titled, “Marcellus Shale Income Gains Natural Experiment.”
The study aims to isolate the causal effect of family income from all other factors that matter for children. “Wealthy people tend to have the know-how and social connections to help their children succeed,” Dr. Martin said. “So, children of wealthy families often do better.” The question Martin’s team will address is whether it is really the money or the other resources wealthy people have that matter for children.
The research takes advantage of a “natural experiment,” because families in New York living above the shale currently cannot receive royalty payments given that the state has a ban on drilling. New York is the “control” group to Pennsylvania’s “experiment” group.
The research will study school districts above the shale region. The Geographic Information Analysis Core in the Penn State’s Population Research Institute (PRI) and Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) will merge together annual maps of Marcellus wells and gas pipelines and locate them within school district boundaries. They will also take annual, individual data about births and reported crimes and categorize them by school district. Because the industry is still growing and has changed over time, looking over ten years of data gives the researchers a unique opportunity to study the effects of income on the children in these areas by analyzing differences in change for children from New York versus Pennsylvania.
Dr. Martin added that the research would not have been possible without support, including seed funding, from SSRI and PRI.
In addition to Dr. Martin, the investigators on this project are: Dr. Kelly Davis, Assistant Research Professor of Human Development and Family Studies; Dr. Diane McLaughlin, Professor of Rural Sociology, Demography, and Sociology; and Dr. Wayne Osgood, Professor of Criminology and Sociology, all from Penn State, and Dr. Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, Associate Professor of Public Policy & Economics at Duke University.