Sustainable development and the extractive industry. An assessment of the Mexican case

This paper investigates the impact of mining on sustainable development in Mexico. Specifically, it examines whether mining affects different dimensions of sustainable development, including consumption patterns, inequalities, education, and environmental quality. Using household data on 2,403 municipalities over a period of 30 years considering four waves of census data (1990, 2000, 2010, 2020), we find that the mining sector has mixed effects on sustainable development. It has a limited positive effect on the income of neighboring households but it also generates negative environmental spillovers. We do not find significant effects on inequalities or education. Overall, our study provides a more nuanced understanding of the impact of mining on various aspects of sustainable development, contributing to ongoing debates on the relationship between natural resource extraction and sustainable development in emerging economies.