“Each generation expanded its horizons, learning from the successes and failures of the preceding generations and leaving lessons for the next wave of women.” – Claudia Goldin [2021]
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Sveriges Riksbank prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023 to Claudia Goldin from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA “for having advanced our understanding of Women’s labour market outcomes.”
Ms. Claudia worked on the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation over the centuries. Her research sheds light on “the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gap”, said the academy. Claudia’s work shows that women are underrepresented in the global labour market and when they work, they earn less than men. The work by Claudia has travelled the archives and collectorate over 200 years of data from the US, allowing her to demonstrate how and why the gender gap in earnings and employment rates has changed over time.
Through her work, Claudia showed that female labour force participation in the labour market did not have an upward trend over this entire period and formed a U-shaped curve instead. Her work shows that the participation of women decreased with the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society in the early twentieth century. Goldin explained this pattern as the result of the structural change and the evolving social norms regarding women’s responsibilities towards home and family.
Understanding women’s role in the labour market is important for the 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.
Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.
From the first Nobel Prize in 1962 to this year 2022, a total of 52 Nobel Prizes have been awarded. Goldin has become the third woman ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences after Elinor Ostrom (2009) and Esther Duflo (2019).
The Nobel Prize in Economics is an addition to this year’s prestigious awards that have gone to COVID-19 vaccine discoveries, atomic snapshots and ”quantum dots” as well as to a Norwegian dramatist and Iranian activist.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Economics was won by a trio of US economists including the former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke for their research on how regulating banks and propping up failing lenders with public cash can stave off an even deeper economic crisis, like the Great Depression of the year.
Goldin’s work focuses on the intersection of the gender pay gap and development.
