The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

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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".

A large number of economically disadvantaged people live around protected areas. Conservation efforts that focus on poverty alleviation, work on the premise that an increase in household wealth decreases use of forest resources. We surveyed 1222 households across four tiger reserves to test the paradigm that an increase in assets leads to reduced forest use and we also assess the effects of other socio-economic factors. We find that increase in assets may reduce Non-timber Forest Product (NTFP) collection, but may not necessarily reduce livestock numbers or use of wood as a cooking fuel. Households that faced more economic setbacks were more likely to state that they wanted more livestock in the future. Education is positively associated with choosing Liquefied Petroleum Gas as a cooking fuel in the future. We find site and resource-specific variation. Fifty percent of all households (range across sites: 6-98) want to collect NTFP while 91% (range: 87-96) want to retain or own more livestock over the next 5-10 years. Understanding current and future resource use will help plan context-specific conservation efforts that are better aligned with reducing specific pressures around protected areas.