Culture, spatial diffusion of ideas and their long-lasting imprints�evidence from Froebel�s kindergarten movement

bauernschuster, stefan; falck, oliver;

We document the spatial diffusion of Friedrich Froebel�s radical invention of kindergartens in 19th-century Germany. The first kindergarten was founded at Froebel�s birthplace. Early spatial diffusion can be explained by cultural proximity, measured by historical dialect similarity, to Froebel�s birthplace. This result is robust to
the inclusion of higher order polynomials in geographic distance and similarity measures with respect to industry, geography or religion. Our findings suggest that a common cultural basis facilitates the spill-over of ideas. We further show that the contemporaneous spatial pattern of child care coverage is still correlated with cultural similarity to Froebel�s place of birth.