Coal leaves a lasting psychological imprint:
doi: 10.1037/pspp0000175
Obschonka et al. document the long lasting stamp of coal fulled industrial revolution on psychological characteristics of populations today. From the abstract:
"Analyzing data from England and Wales, we examine relationships between the historical employment share in large-scale coal-based industries (coal mining and steam-powered manufacturing industries that used this coal as fuel for their steam engines) and today’s regional variation in personality and well-being. Even after controlling for possible historical confounds (historical energy supply, education, wealth, geology, climate, population density), we find that the historical local dominance of large-scale coal-based industries predicts today’s markers of psychological adversity (lower Conscientiousness [and order facet scores], higher Neuroticism [and anxiety and depression facet scores], lower activity [an Extraversion facet], and lower life satisfaction and life expectancy)."
They see similar effects in the USA:
"Finally, a robustness check in the U.S. replicates the effect of the historical concentration of large-scale industries on today’s levels of psychological adversity."
From the body of the paper:
"In the U.K., the negative effect of large-scale industries was particularly robust (when controlling for historical confounds and using distance to coalfields as an instrument) in the prediction of lower Conscientiousness and well-being (life expectancy) and higher Neuroticism. In the U.S. robustness check, we found a similar pattern for lower Conscientiousness and higher Neuroticism in terms of region-level correlations (in addition to a negative correlation between large-scale industries and Agreeableness, which we did not find in the main U.K. analysis). The instrumental variable regression in the U.S. analysis confirmed the negative effect of large-scale industries on Neuroticism, and also revealed a negative effect of large-scale industries on well-being."
"However, one should stress that although the massive historical industrialization of these regions was often based on (spatial proximity to) coal resources, it was not necessarily the coal itself that created the local psychological climate; rather, it is likely that the stressful work and living conditions, together with selective migration patterns and lasting economic hardship, led to the collective psychological consequences observed in our study."
sidd