The research, which will be released as a working paper on Monday from the economists Kerwin Kofi Charles of the University of Chicago, Jonathan Guryan of Northwestern University and Jessica Pan of National University of Singapore, highlights a continued divergence across the United States in social attitudes about the role of women in the work force. It shows how much location — where a woman is born and where she chooses to live as an adult — matters for her work and pay.

Perhaps most strikingly, the study finds that a woman’s lifelong earnings and how much she works are influenced by the levels of sexism in the state where she was born. A woman born in the Deep South is likely to face a much wider economic gender gap than a woman born on the Pacific Coast, the research shows, even if both women move to New York as adults.

“That’s the first shocking thing,” Mr. Charles, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, said in an interview, “just how large and persistent the differences are.”