The Geography of Female Labor Force Participation and the Diffusion of Information Alessandra Fogli New York University, Minneapolis Fed, CEPR Stefania Marcassa University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Fed Laura Veldkamp New York University * July 2, 2007 - Preliminary and Incomplete Draft - Abstract Many theories have been proposed to explain the dramatic rise in women’s labor force partic- ipation over the last century, but few have studied its geographic pattern. This paper documents the geographic patterns in female labor force participation and shows that a model of informa- tion diffusion can explain their evolution over time. Using data from 1930-2000 for over 3000 counties and techniques developed by geographers for measuring the spatial dependence of so- cial phenomena, we show that spatial effects matter. The inter-county variation in labor force participation is well explained by the impact of distance-weighted geographic units, even after controlling for demographic and economic factors. Our explanation for this spatial dependence is that participation decisions are affected by women’s uncertainty about the effect of employment on their children. Information about the effect of maternal employment is spread not through a centralized news channel, but in a decentralized way, person-to-person, diffusing slowly through space and time. Keywords: Female labor force participation, spatial diffusion, contagion, geography, counties. JEL Nos.: J21, N32, R12, Z13. * Corresponding author: afogli@stern.nyu.edu, Research Department Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 90 Hennepin Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55401, tel: (612) 204-5174. We thank conference participants at the Midwest Macroeconomics meetings and the 2007 SED conferences for helpful comments and suggestions. Laura Veldkamp thanks Princeton University for their hospitality and financial support through the Kenen fellowship. Keywords: economic geography, female labor force participation, information diffusion. JEL codes: R1, E2, J21, N32. 1