Corno and de Walque 2012; Wilson 2012), women's empowerment and child health (Tolonen 2014), and labor market outcomes (Kotsadam and Tolonen 2014).Kotsadam and Tolonen (2014) use DHS data from Africa, and find that mine openings cause women to shift from agriculture to service production and that women become more likely to work for cash and year-round as opposed to seasonally. Continuing this analysis, Tolonen (2014) explores the links between mining and female empowerment in eight gold-producing countries in East and West Africa, including Ghana. Women in gold mining communities have more diversified labor markets opportunities, better access to health care, and are less likely to accept domestic violence. In addition, child mortality decreases in mining communities, especially for girls. In a study that focuses exclusively on Ghana, Aragón and Rud (2013b) explore the link between pollution from mining and agricultural productivity. The results point toward decreasing agricultural productivity because of environmental pollution and soil degradation.We explore the effects of mining activity on poverty, inequality, employment, access to infrastructure (electricity, water, and sanitary facilities), and children's health outcomes in communities and districts with gold mining. Using the DHS and GLSS, we combine these data sets with production data for 17 large-scale mines in Ghana. We find that a new large-scale gold mine changes economic outcomes, such as access to employment and cash earnings. Furthermore, the evidence points toward increased wage rates in mining communities, and an increase in household expenditure on housing and energy.An important welfare indicator in developing countries is infant mortality, and we note a large and significant decrease in mortality rates among young children, at both the local and district levels. 1 We hypothesize that increased access to prenatal care is one of the mechanisms behind the increased survival rate. Among households that always lived in the area, the mine leads to more access to electricity, and to less incidence of diarrhea in children. However, among the migrant 2 population, the share of households that have access to electricity decreases, and 1 In the 2010 Ghana population census average district size is 112,000 2 The DHS question used is "How long have you been living continuously in (PLACE OF RESIDENCE)?" Answers are coded as "always" or "number of years". A non-migrant is defined as a person who responded "always" and migrant as a person who responded with "number of years".
