Rooted Decisions: Childhood Exposure to Labor Markets and Women's Work

How does early exposure to labor markets affect women’s work in adulthood? Using Indonesian data, I find strong and persistent effects of longer exposure to high-female employment places, especially during the formative years between ages 6 and 15. My estimation strategy compares women who moved from their birthplace at different ages but now live in the same location. I find that women from high-employment areas have 5 percentage points higher employment than those from lower-employment areas, suggesting that about 23% of the spatial inequality in women’s work is passed to the next generation, likely through learning of birthplace gender norms.