Labor economist and historian Claudia Goldin will be honored on Dec. 10 as the 2023 Nobel Prize for Economics laureate for her contribution to understanding women’s labor markets outcomes. She was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences on Oct. 9.
Born in the Bronx borough of New York to Jewish parents, Goldin initially studied microbiology because of her fascination with Manhattan museums. While at Cornell University for undergraduate school, she identified her passion for history and economics and later achieved her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Afterward, she taught at various distinguished universities before ending up at Harvard University in 1990, where she was the first woman offered tenure in the Harvard Economics Department. At the nearby National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, she met her husband, Lawrence Katz, also an Economics professor at Harvard bearing interests in the economics of labor and social issues.
“Well, fundamentally, Claudia made women a topic of study for labor economists. Without her research—her curiosity, creativity, and courage—it would have taken many more years for an understanding of trends in women’s educational and labor force experience and the factors that have affected them to become issues considered central to mainstream economics,”Cecilia Rouse, a student of Goldin and current Katzman-Ernst Professor in Economics and Education at Princeton University, told the Sampan.
Currently serving as the co-director of the NBER’s Gender in the Economy initiative, she has held numerous leadership positions with other notable groups such as the Economic History Association and American Economic Association. Goldin’s pioneering research first emanated during the feminist movement of the 1970s. Recognizing the absence of women in data following marriage and motherhood, she found her niche in analyzing women’s societal roles through an economic lens. Goldin used time series analysis over the last two centuries to better understand the patterns of the gender wage gap. Contrary to popular belief, she discovered the assumed continuous ascent of women in labor markets was not the case.
Goldin determined that female participation coincided with evolving labor trends and social norms. Deviation from an agrarian to an industrial environment resulted in a downturn of activity in married women; this notion pertained to their difficulties of toiling in factories while maintaining their roles as mothers and housewives at the time. In this facet, Goldin ascertained that unequal wages are spelled out by the scarce flexibility of labor in conjunction with women taking care of their families. Delineated by the Cato Institute, this idea negates gender discrimination simply being the root of the wage gap, which supports her findings from her 1990 trail-blazing book, “Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women.”
Following the advancement of the service sector at the turn of the last century, women were afforded more opportunities in education and employment. The development of contraceptives expedited a drastic social shift in which women started behaving more independently and for their self-interest. Nonetheless, there remain significant gaps in earnings between men and women. According to the American Association of University Women, the disparity in wages heightens throughout a woman’s career, resulting in over $500 billion in total being deprived annually for women. Previously explained by the divergence in career paths, the difference in wages now primarily occurs in the same occupations, as Goldin has revealed. Hence, not only do women constitute a fragment of the global workforce, but are slighted in pay in equivalent positions to their male counterparts.
As a former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under the Biden-Harris Administration, Rouse attributed positive policy-making to Goldin’s research and asserted how male economists were unable to present such critical data beforehand. By using this data, there can be a more viable path toward creating more equitable wages. And, as she enters her new position in January 2024 as President of the Brookings Institute, considered “America’s most prestigious think-tank” by The Economist, Rouse remembers how Goldin served as a great influence in her career. “Not only did she read and edit countless versions of my doctoral dissertation, she co-authored one of my most widely cited pieces of research, on how blind auditions increased women’s participation in professional orchestras. I played the flute, and we got into conversation about the audition process. It was such a pleasure and honor to work with her throughout the project.”
Through her decades of work in disclosing the lack of gender parity in labor markets, Goldin has exposed societal inequities concerning wages and the misconceptions about women linearly gaining higher economic status. As stated by the IMF, Goldin is regularly considered one of the most outstanding female economists in the world. Bringing to light the obstacles women have had and continue to face, the Harvard professor has set a precedent for studying women in the economy; in turn, people can employ this knowledge moving forward to make the gender wage gap more salient. Setting a precedent for economists around the world, Goldin has paved the way for many female economists to make their mark.
Sampan reached out to Goldin for an interview but the economist explained that was she no longer giving interviews and that she needed to focus on her professorial duties and the impending Nobel Prize acceptance.
