Early Life, Career, Impact, and Nobel Prize

Claudia Goldin is an American economic historian and labor economist, and the third woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel). She is the first woman to have won the prize solo.

Best known for her historical research on women in the American economy, Goldin’s work spans a wide range of topics, including the gender wage gap, women in the labor force, income inequality, education, immigration, and technological change. She has published several books, held multiple director roles with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and been recognized with many other awards and academic fellowships.

Early Life and Education

Born Claudia Dale Goldin in Bronx, New York, in 1946, Goldin grew up wanting to be a scientist. She originally studied microbiology before discovering economics and pursuing an undergraduate degree in the field at Cornell University, earning a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1967.

Goldin then went on to get a master’s degree (1969) and doctorate (1972) focusing on labor economics at the University of Chicago. Her study of American economic history delved into the economics of slavery and the post-Civil War South, and her realization that major changes in the labor force during this period had much to do with women, families, and children sparked her interest in focusing on the history of women in the labor force.

Career and Contributions

After her Ph.D., Goldin was hired as an assistant professor of economics in 1971 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught there for three years. In 1974, she accepted an offer at Princeton University, where she taught economics for six years.

From 1979 to 1990, Goldin was a faculty member in the University of Pennsylvania’s economics department before joining the faculty at Harvard, the first woman to be granted tenure in her department.

Goldin was the director of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)’s Development of the American Economy program from 1989 to 2017, and is currently a co-director of the NBER’s Gender in the Economy group. In 1999 and 2000, she was president of the Economic History Association, and in 2013, she was president of the American Economic Association.

As one of the first researchers to study the historical role of women in the U.S. labor force, Goldin has made huge contributions to the field of economics as it relates to gender and the workforce. Her most recent book, published in 2021, is titled “Career & Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity;” it explores how women have balanced their careers with their family life from 1900 until the present. In it, she characterizes and demonstrates how “greedy” work, or jobs that pay more for being on call or working long hours, contribute to the gender wage gap.

In an interview, Goldin said, “We know the gender gap is widened when families are formed. This doesn’t mean that women leave the workforce; it means that they take positions in which flexibility is cheaper. It’s the cost of flexibility that really matters.”

Goldin’s other influential work focuses on the history of women’s participation in higher education, including the reasons why women now comprise the majority of university undergraduate enrollment numbers; the impact of the contraceptive pill on women’s marriage and career decisions; the social indicator of women’s surnames after marriage; and the life cycle of women’s employment. She is currently working on a book called “An Evolving Force: A History of Women in the Economy.”

Academic Positions and Affiliations

Goldin is currently the Henry Lee Professor of Economics and holds the Lee and Ezpeleta Professorship of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She is also a research fellow with the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

Goldin is a member of many notable organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of Labor Economists (SOLE), the Econometric Society, and the Cliometric Society.

From 1984 to 1988, she was editor of the Journal of Economic History. She has also served on several editorial and advisory boards for other journals and economics publications.

Awards and Recognition

Goldin has won many awards for her work, most notably the 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. She is the third woman to receive the prize and the first woman to be awarded it solo. The prize was awarded for Goldin’s work on the history of women’s participation in the American labor market, “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes,” and cited as “the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labor market participation through the centuries.”

Specifically, Goldin mapped the trend of women’s participation in the American labor market and demonstrated that it did not follow a straightforward upward trajectory throughout the period of time she studied (the late 18th century to the late 20th century). In fact, it formed a U-shaped curve: The participation of married women in the labor economy decreased during the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society and began to increase as the service sector grew in the early 20th century, then continued to increase as access to education and the contraceptive pill grew and career expectations for women shifted.

Some of the other notable awards she has received include: 

• The Richard A. Lester Prize for Outstanding Book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations, for her 2021 book, “Career & Family” (2022)
• The Nemmers Prize in Economics from Northwestern University (2020)
• The BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics (2019)
• The IZA Prize in Labor Economics from the Institute of Labor Economics (2016)
• The Mincer Prize from the Society of Labor Economists for her lifetime contributions to the field of labor economics (2009)

Goldin has also been granted honorary doctorates, fellowships, and research grants from many major academic institutions and foundations.

Impact and Influence

One of the major impacts of Goldin’s Nobel Prize-winning work is that she provided a different explanation for the gender pay gap. Previously, the gap could be explained by gendered differences in educational and occupational choices. Goldin’s work demonstrates that much of the difference in earnings currently is between women and men working in the same occupation, and that the gap in earnings usually arises when a woman gives birth to her first child.

Regarding this work, Jakob Svensson, chair of the Committee for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, said, “Understanding women’s role in the labour [sic] is important for society. Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research, we now know much more about the underlying factors and which barriers may need to be addressed in the future.”

Goldin’s lifetime work has had a huge impact on the field of economics, ushering in a missing perspective backed up by comprehensive data and analysis. Betsey Stevensen, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and one of Goldin’s mentees, said, “Claudia marched in to document the changing roles of women in society at a time when many male economists just didn’t care. Claudia understood that work and life were intertwined.”

Cecilia Rouse, a former Ph.D. student of Goldin’s, a former adviser to Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and a former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Joe Biden, commented on Goldin’s Nobel win. She said, “What they recognized was a body of work, which piece by piece has helped us to fill in a portrait and understand the role of women in the economy over centuries. She has helped us to understand the wage structure over the 20th century. She’s done work on education, and she does so with intention; she does so creatively.”

The Bottom Line

Claudia Goldin has contributed much to the field of economics and beyond. As recognized by her 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, her lifetime historical research and economic analysis has helped shape how we understand the gender pay gap and what factors contributed to women’s participation in the American labor market over different periods of time.

As the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard, she continues to publish, teach, and mentor, as well as contribute to research organizations such as the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).