Oil impacts the lives of ordinary citizens in oil-producing countries in several categories. Incomes (per capita) are higher and the cost of some goods often rises. However this does not necessarily mean that the lives of ordinary people improve. In countries where the vast majority of people maintain a subsistence lifestyle, without technical skills, very little improves for the common people. Oil money can be used to improve a country's infrastructure, but is more often used to pad the pockets of the elite.
             Where industrialization and modernization, the improvement of roads and factories does not occur in "boom years", the ordinary citizen suffers most when oil prices fluctuate lower and there are no other supports for the country's economy. Oil money, though vast sums in the hands of a few, is not very much when compared to the great poverty of some of the large populations we have studied, so smaller populations tend to benefit more.
             In countries fractured by insurgent states, combating the insurgencies commands the focus and resources of the government to such an extent that the advantages of having oil resources are never realized. (Colombia)
             Oil resources tend to improve the lives of the common people in places where there is already a well-functioning economy, so that regional disparities are lessened and families are less disrupted by intra and inter realm migrations of those seeking the economic opportunity that oil often offers.
             The foreign investment and support often required to bring oil to market may also bring foreign workers and cultural changes that cause resentment and hostility toward foreign powers in the mind of the ordinary citizen.
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