The 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics goes to Claudia Goldin, for her work related to women in the labor market, reported the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics to the American Goldin is specifically awarded “for having advanced our understanding of women’s outcomes in the labor market.” Goldin analyzed data from the United States and explains the wage gap between women and men by educational reasons and by the birth of the first child.
Women are greatly underrepresented in the global labor market and, when they work, they earn less than men, the Swedish academy recalled.
Goldin has trawled through the archives and compiled more than 200 years of data from the United States, “allowing her to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time.”
The academy recalled that, “despite modernization, economic growth and the increase in the proportion of women employed in the 20th century, for a long period of time the wage gap between women and men barely closed.”
According to the winner, part of the explanation is that educational decisions, which impact a lifetime of professional opportunities, are made at a relatively young age.
«If young women’s expectations are shaped by the experiences of previous generations (for example, their mothers, who did not return to work until their children were grown), then development will be slow.»
The Swedish academy reminds that, historically, much of the gender gap in income could be explained by differences in education and occupational options.
“However, Goldin has shown that most of this income gap is now between women and women in the same occupation, and that it largely emerges with the birth of the first child.”
During the 20th century, women’s education levels rose continually and in most high-income countries are now substantially higher than those of men.
According to the academy, “Goldin demonstrated that access to the birth control pill played an important role in accelerating this revolutionary change by offering new opportunities for career planning.”
“Understanding the role of women at work is important for society. Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research, we now know much more about the underlying factors and obstacles that may need to be addressed in the future,» Jakob Svensson, chair of the Economic Sciences Prize Committee, said in a statement. on the occasion of the awarding of the prize.
The award is the last of the Nobel Prizes announced, after the winners were announced last week in the categories of Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace and will be awarded, like the others, next December.
The Nobel Prize awards Goldin, an expert on gender differences in labor economics
The American Claudia Goldin, awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics today for her work related to women in the labor market, is the third woman to receive this award, after her compatriot Elinor Ostrom in 2009 and the Frenchwoman Esther Duflot in 2019.
The Goldin Award is given specifically for advancing the understanding of the outcomes women achieve in the labor market.” Goldin analyzed historical data from the United States and explains the wage gap between women and men, among other reasons, due to educational reasons and the birth of the first child.
Goldin has scoured the archives and compiled more than 200 years of U.S. data, “allowing her to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time,” the study said. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced the award.
Goldin is an economist who directed the Development of the American Economy program at the National Bureau of Economic Research between 1989 and 2017. She was born in New York in 1946.
With a degree in Economics from Cornell University and a PhD from the University of Chicago (1972), she was the first woman to occupy an Economics department at Harvard University in 1990, the year in which she also published her study “Understanding the Gender Gap.” ”.
In that document she already investigated the gender wage gap between men and women in the United States since 1820.
She is considered an expert in the causes underlying the origin of gender wage differences and her research, with numerous publications and articles, has contributed to the historical analysis of the contribution of women in the economy and the problems of double presence to make work and family compatible.