The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023 to
Claudia Goldin
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
“for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”
She uncovered key drivers of gender differences in the labour market
This year’s Laureate in the Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin, provided the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries. Her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap.
Women are vastly underrepresented in the global labour market and, when they work, they earn less than men. Claudia Goldin has trawled the archives and collected over 200 years of data from the US, allowing her to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time.
Goldin showed that female participation in the labour market did not have an upward trend over this entire period, but instead forms a U-shaped curve. The participation of married women decreased with the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society in the early nineteenth century, but then started to increase with the growth of the service sector in the early twentieth century. Goldin explained this pattern as the result of structural change and evolving social norms regarding women’s responsibilities for home and family.
During the twentieth century, women’s education levels continuously increased, and in most high-income countries they are now substantially higher than for men. Goldin demonstrated that access to the contraceptive pill played an important role in accelerating this revolutionary change by offering new opportunities for career planning.
Despite modernisation, economic growth and rising proportions of employed women in the twentieth century, for a long period of time the earnings gap between women and men hardly closed. According to Goldin, part of the explanation is that educational decisions, which impact a lifetime of career opportunities, are made at a relatively young age. If the expectations of young women are formed by the experiences of previous generations – for instance, their mothers, who did not go back to work until the children had grown up – then development will be slow.
Historically, much of the gender gap in earnings could be explained by differences in education and occupational choices. However, Goldin has shown that the bulk of this earnings difference is now between and women in the same occupation, and that it largely arises with the birth of the first child.
“Understanding women’s role in the labour 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,” says Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.
Illustrations
The illustrations are free to use for non-commercial purposes. Attribute ”© Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences”
Illustration: The prize in economic sciences 2023
Illustration: The U-shaped curve (pdf)
Illustration: The importance of expectations (pdf)
Illustration: The parenthood effect (pdf)
Read more about this year’s prize
Popular science background: History helps us understand gender differences in the labour market (pdf)
Scientific background to the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023 (pdf)
Claudia Goldin, born 1946 in New York, NY, USA. PhD 1972 from University of Chicago, IL, USA. Professor at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
“Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” and not just “Nobel Prize”?
Well, you deftly dodged a bullet from the usual suspects.
Imagine. A central bank handing out such a prestigious award in the economic sciences. 😉
I recall some pundit on Twitter going on about how the Nobel prize in economics was “fake”. Whatever…..
So Goldin provides a micro-foundation explanation of the wage gap. Interesting. And congratulations!
It appears an evil evil voice from the past has crept up on us:
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2020/10/this-time-was-not-different#comment-242851
“If it is a woman, Claudia Goldin is probably more likely than Mariana Mazucato.”
[ Shivers, as the room gets cold ] Is anyone else getting what the kiddies call……. “the creepers”??
When it comes to doing great work for an entire career that answered important questions and everybody noticed, Claudia was the hands-down choice.
What took ’em so long?
At that time, when Professor Rosser made those comments I was not especially familiar with her name. But that’s a shameful confession on the limits of my own education and not related to her great expanse and volume of work.
It is amazing how the most prestigious prize in Economics is now (over the last 15 years) given out for :
a) Things that anyone who has run a small business or P&L already knows, or
b) Creating an aura of legitimacy around the ‘woke’ agenda.
Relative to its prestige (which is dropping), this award it given out for work of surprisingly little value in truly improving the human condition.
Darren: Be sure to tell Guido Imbens (2021) that his LATE econometric technique is “woke”. I am sure he will be surprised.
You failed to defend this most recent prize or any of the others in the timeframe I mentioned.
Plus, Guido’s LATE econometric technique is in fact an example of my first point a). It is something people who run businesses already know.
My point stands.
@ Darren
What do you think he put the Goldin post up for?? Because Menzie thought it was a travesty?? Gawd, are you taking the same stupid pills Econned pops in his mouth for breakfast every morning???
Every functionally illiterate MoFo who visits this blog thinks when he wails like a 4 year old who scratched his knee on the concrete, Menzie is supposed to come running with a 20 page essay.
Menzie Chinn,
I don’t agree with Darren above but I’m remiss to inform you that Imbens & Angrist (1994) references Angrist & Krueger (1991). The latter being a paper on post-war white Vietnam vets experiencing much lower earnings than white nonveterans. The 1991 paper also suggests the effect of veteran status on nonwhites was not statistically significant. It’s not to say LATE itself is “woke” but it does conveniently reference a paper that could certainly be interpreted as “woke” – depending on one’s definition of the word “woke”.
those who invoke “woke” are just playing grievance politics.
@ Baffling
I’m sorry, I’m Democrat and consider myself progressive on some issues. But the woke stuff gets silly. And frankly “woke” people chose their own terminology. If “woke” people became so absurdist that they made their own terminology into a derogatory term and a term of derision, exactly whose fault would that be?? The fact the word seems to bother you now~~I think you answered my question already, by implication.
“Woke” is Democrats’ version of Republicans’ “family values”. It’s a pile of crap term that deserves being scorned and laughed at.
Understanding why women are paid less than men even in similar jobs couldn’t possibly be of any use to “truly improving the human condition”???
Did you forget to turn on your brain on, or are you one of those dumb ass right wingers who have nothing to turn on but a rambling mouth?
darren, this research impacts half of the worlds population. and if this is information that is already “known”, but has not been corrected, that in itself is a problem. it is pathetic for somebody to say they know women are underpaid, but respond with “who cares”. I would imagine most people who have an issue with this Nobel prize, unfortunately have an issue with women in general. which is sad. glass ceilings do exist, unfortunately. we should be breaking them with every opportunity.
I am glad prof. goldin won the award. not because she is female, which is a perk. because she highlighted a significant problem in the modern western world. the female wage gap is preposterous. it affects every household directly, but is overlooked by many households. it is unfair, and it is wrong. glad the Nobel in economics highlighted this issue.
I remember being a young man working at a construction site while in college. the foreman had two individuals running the heavy rollers, one an older man and another middle aged woman. the woman was the superior worker, and the foreman knew this. but he told me point blank, he preferred to have the old man on the crew because he believed a man should have a job to feed his family. even though his work was shoddy. and the woman had a young family of her own. I learned that sexism can be rampant, and it is both obvious and subtle. over the years, I have tended to enjoy any opportunity to put the screws on folks in powers of authority who exhibit similar characteristics.
politically, my feeling is that many who oppose abortion do so not because of morality, but as a constraint on women in general. it is related to maintaining this wage gap, especially amongst the working class.
I find it disheartening that in the past, when the Nobel in economics was announced, this thread would be filled with compliments for that person’s accomplishments. Now that a woman was awarded, the thread gets comments on wokeness and “everbody already knew what she published” garbage. it simply reinforces what prof. goldin identified as a problem in society as a whole. women are still disparaged in various ways in spite of their successes. simply because they are not men.
@ Baffling
I think the comments relating to “they already knew what she had published” is more referring to the collegial or academic community sense. That is why I (an obvious non-academic) only found her name to be “familiar” in the sense I had probably seen it “in passing” when wandering about on Google Scholar. When they say “they already” know, it’s a compliment in the sense her academic colleagues had already recognized the value and new boundaries ventured in Goldin’s work.
I was always deeply afraid that this might have been why Alan Krueger (one of my favorite economists) had left us. Which I found to be exceedingly exceedingly sad. There is always controversy around these choices, because of some great ones are bound to be left out in an annual award that only goes to one person. It is very silly for highly intelligent people to take that “placement” or “predicament” of events in a personal fashion. They are intelligent enough to know better than to take not getting that in a personal fashion.
The work itself and contributions to society, should be how they take it.
I think it’s very cool you included the illustrations in the post Menzie, so thanks for including those.
Sometimes, even in “traditional” families (male/female, no divorce) the woman is the breadwinner of the family. My Mom really was the breadwinner for our family after she became an RN, in my very early teens.