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Our research investigates the impact of a major resource boom on income inequality within Kazakhstan's regions using household-level data across the entire income distribution and within the top and bottom halves of the income distribution. In addition, we evaluate the inequality dynamics separately in urban and rural areas. The theoretical foundation shows that a resource boom will decrease income inequality through the labor market if the non-traded sector is relatively intensive in its use of unskilled labor. Government transfers financed by resource income can further reduce inequality. Our regression analysis indicates that resource booms lower inequality when we control for the effect of changing labor income, institutional quality, education levels, and public health care spending. In addition, quality of institutions is an important equalizing factor for the lower income households in urban areas, but not in rural areas. Public health programs decrease overall inequality in the rural areas; however, they do not affect the bottom half of the income distribution

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Kazakhstan has a relatively high level of overall gender development, as well as of female employment in its energy industries. Diverse views and backgrounds are necessary to address the challenges of curbing emissions in Kazakhstan, a major fossil fuel producer and exporter. However, our analysis of the Labor Force Survey indicates that female representation among energy sector managers and overall workforce has been falling over time. Moreover, we find that women in Kazakhstan’s coal mining, petroleum extraction, and power industries are concentrated in low-skilled and non-core occupations. Next, by analyzing data on labor compensation within energy occupations, we discover signs of persistent vertical discrimination, which may reduce incentives for women to upgrade their skills. Finally, we find that major shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may stall or reverse prior progress in increasing the energy sector’s gender diversity. Our findings contribute to raising gender awareness among the stakeholders in Kazakhstan’s energy sector in order to facilitate evidence-based gender mainstreaming.