Who is Claudia Goldin, Nobel Prize winner for economics?

On Monday 9 October the Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to American researcher Claudia Goldin. She thus becomes the third woman in history to receive this prestigious award.

Specialist in inequalities in the labor market

Professor of economics at Harvard, Claudia Goldin, 77, was chosen by the Academy for “having improved understanding of the situation of women in the labor market”.

In a series of tweets, the Swedish academy returned to the winner’s main research areas:

Claudia Goldin, winner of this year’s Economics Prize, demonstrated that women’s participation in the workforce has not trended upward for over 200 years, but rather has formed an upward curve.

Married women’s participation declined with the shift from an agricultural to an industrial society in the early 19th century, but then began to increase with the growth of the service sector in the early 20th century. Goldin explains this trend in terms of structural changes and evolving social norms regarding women’s responsibilities within the home and family.

Over the course of the 20th century, women’s educational attainment has risen steadily and in most high-income countries is now significantly higher than that of men. Claudia Goldin has shown that access to the contraceptive pill has played an important role in accelerating this revolutionary change by providing new career planning opportunities.

Despite modernization, economic growth, and the increase in the percentage of women employed throughout the 20th century, the gender pay gap remained largely unaddressed for a long period of time.

According to Claudia Goldin, this is partly because educational decisions, which impact lifelong career opportunities, are made at a relatively young age. If young women’s expectations are shaped by the experiences of previous generations – for example, those of their mothers, who only returned to work once their children became adults – change will be slow.

Historically, the pay gap between men and women has largely been explained by differences in education and career choices. However, Claudia Goldin, winner of this year’s economic competition, has shown that most of this income gap now affects men and women in the same profession and that it largely occurs at the birth of the first child.

By digging into archives, compiling and correcting historical data, Claudia Goldin was able to present new and often surprising facts. She has also allowed us to better understand the factors that influence the opportunities available to women in the labor market. […] The fact that women’s choices have been, and remain, often limited by marriage and responsibilities for home and family is at the center of her analyzes and explanatory models. Goldin’s studies have also taught us that change takes time, because choices that affect entire careers are based on expectations that may later prove to be incorrect.

His ideas reach far beyond the borders of the United States, and similar models have been seen in many other countries. His research allows us to better understand the labor markets of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

The economist reacted to the announcement of his award: “ This is a very important prize, not only for me, but for many people who work on this topic and who try to understand why there are still great inequalities.”and this, despite“important developments”.