Rooted Decisions: Childhood Exposure to Labor Markets and Women's Work
I show that the place women grow up in shapes their participation in the labor market as adults
Abstract: Large and persistent differences exist in women’s labor force participation within multiple countries. These persistent differences in employment can arise if where women grow up shapes their work choices. However, they can also arise under endogenous sorting, so that women who want to work move to places where more women work. In this paper, I use rich data from Indonesia to argue that the place women grow up in shapes their participation in the labor market as adults. To do so, I leverage variation coming from women moving across labor markets to estimate the effect on women’s labor force participation of spending more time in their birthplace. My strategy is similar to that of Chetty and Hendren (2018) and compares the labor supply choices of women who currently live in the same location, but who emigrated from their birthplace at different ages. My results indicate that birthplace has strong and persistent effects on adult women’s labor supply. By the time they turn sixteen, women born in a location at the 75th of female employment will be 5 p.p. more likely to work than those born in a 25th percentile location. Place is particularly important during the formative period between 9 and 16 years old. These results suggest that 23 percent of the current spatial inequality in women’s employment is transmitted to the next generation growing up in these locations.