JEL classification: J23 Q33 R23 Keywords:Boom and bust Energy Job multipliers Labor demand shocks Local labor markets a b s t r a c tThe impacts of energy price boom and bust are analyzed through the differential growth in employment and earnings between local labor markets with and without energy resources in Western Canada. The estimated differentials attributed to the boom-induced labor demand shocks show significant direct and indirect impacts on the earnings and employment within the energy extraction and other nonenergy local sectors respectively. The local job multipliers indicate that job creation within the energy extraction sector leads to modest job creation within the non-energy local sectors during boom periods. For every ten energy extraction jobs created during a boom period, approximately three construction jobs, two retail jobs, and four and a half service jobs are created.

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, part of a consortium that includes a parallel centers at the University of Michigan and the National Bureau of Economic Research, was established in 1998 through a grant from the Social Security Administration. The goals of the Center are to promote research on retirement issues, to transmit new findings to the policy community and the public, to help train new scholars, and to broaden access to valuable data sources. Through these initiatives, the Center hopes to forge a strong link between the academic and policy communities around an issue of critical importance to the nation's future.

Results. Older Americans' homeownership rates were stable until age 80. The homes were increasingly mortgage free; home equity increased with age, and relatively few older adults took out home equity loans or reverse annuity mortgages. Housing consumption flows increased with age; nonhousing consumption flows declined after age 60 at a rate of approximately 1.4% per year.Discussion. The results suggest that the consumption of cohorts of older Americans does not decrease dramatically over a 20-year period and that they are also not converting their housing assets into other types of income or consumption, at least up to age 80. A number of reasons, including the bequest motive and the life cycle hypothesis, might explain this behavior.

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The poorest among the older population are those who are income and consumption poor. Understanding the nature of this double poverty population is important in measuring the success of future public policies to reduce poverty among this group.

In the energy-rich provinces of Western Canada, inequality rose over the past two decades while poverty declined, raising the question of whether the recent energy boom was a contributing factor. This study uses local labour market variation in energy extraction intensity to identify these distributional impacts. The growth in local outcomes attributable to the boom is found to be U-shaped and significant across all distributional segments, leading to somewhat increased local inequality aggregates and reduced local poverty. This pattern is preserved but varies across sectors, driving a large local inequality increase in energy extraction, with smaller rises and reductions in other industries. Résumé. Les effets de répartition d'un booménergétique dans l'Ouest canadien.Dans les provinces riches enénergie de l'Ouest canadien, les inégalités se sont accrues au cours des deux dernières décennies pendant que la pauvreté déclinait, sans qu'on puisse toujours dire si le booménergétiqueétait un facteur explicatif important. Cetteétude utilise un marché local du travail, soumisà des variations dans l'intensité de l'extraction de l'énergie, pour identifier les effets de répartition. On découvre que la croissance des effets locaux attribuables au boom suit un pattern en U, et est significatifà travers tous les segments de répartition. Voilà qui a menéà une inégalité quelque peu accrue dans les agrégats locaux maisà une pauvreté locale diminuée. Le pattern se répète dans tous les secteurs, mais varie selon les secteurs, ce qui enclenche un grand accroissement dans l'inégalité locale dans l'extraction de l'énergie, et des croissances et déclins plus faibles dans les autres industries.

Short excerpts of these working papers may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit is given to the source.

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