However, these artisanal mines are central to the livelihood of more than 100 million people in the world today. In 2014, in Burkina Faso alone, 640,800 people worked in the extractive sector, or 3.6% of the country’s population. Virtually all of these people worked in artisanal mines (industrial mines employed around 6,000 people in 2014). Paradoxically, studies quantitatively measuring the effects of artisanal mines are extremely limited.
To try to understand the reality of the “natural resource curse” around artisanal and industrial mines, we compare in the article the standard of living of households living in the immediate vicinity of mines with the situation of those living further, before and after the mining boom. We look at household consumption, which is the best indicator of their economic resources in the absence of reliable income data. We benefit from geocoded data on surveyed households, industrial mines, declared artisanal mines, and geological zones of formation of Birimian green rocks, which constitute the main geological formation explaining the development of gold in Burkina Faso
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