Claudia Goldin

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  In October 2023, the economist Claudia Goldin received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes". Only two women had won the award before her. None had ever won it alone until she did.

  Goldin holds the Henry Lee Professor of Economics chair at Harvard University. Her path there was not obvious. As a child she wanted to be an archaeologist, and as a teenager she planned to study germs. How did that child end up studying paychecks? What did she discover about why women's wages and careers have trailed men's for so long? And why did her answers surprise so many of her fellow economists?

  810113757

• 2. From Microbes To Markets

  ›

  Claudia Dale Goldin was born in the Bronx, New York City, on the 14th of May 1946, into a Jewish family. Her father, Leon Goldin, worked as a data processing manager at Burlington Industries. Her mother, Lucille Rosansky Goldin, was the principal of Public School 105 in the Bronx.

  The archaeologist's dream gave way in junior high school, when Goldin read Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters, published in 1926. The book pulled her toward bacteriology. As a high school junior she took a summer course in microbiology at Cornell University. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, she enrolled at Cornell to study microbiology.

  In her sophomore year, she took a class with the economist Alfred Kahn. She later described him as a man "whose utter delight in using economics to uncover hidden truths did for economics what Paul de Kruif's stories had done for microbiology". Kahn was then working on airline deregulation.

  Goldin earned her BA in economics from Cornell in 1967. She finished a master's degree at the University of Chicago in 1969, and her PhD in industrial organization and labor economics followed there in 1972. At Chicago, she was one of only three women in a class of 55, though she says she recalls nothing particularly peculiar about it.

  134918

• 3. Urban Slavery And War

  ›

  The Economics of Urban Slavery: 1820 to 1860 was the title of Goldin's doctoral dissertation. It examined slavery in the cities of the antebellum South. Her first major research therefore had nothing to do with women or the family.

  That early work continued with the American Civil War. In 1975 she and the late Frank Lewis wrote a groundbreaking piece, "The Economic Cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and Implications". In 1976 came her book Urban Slavery in the American South, 1820 to 1860: A Quantitative History.

  In an autobiographical essay called "The Economist as Detective", published in 1998, Goldin explained how her focus shifted. Economists at the time often studied the family as a single unit. She realized she had been "slighting the family member who would undergo the most profound change over the long run". That person was the wife and mother. Her explanation was blunt: "I neglected her because the sources had."

  The essay also carries advice for younger scholars. Research what you are passionate about, she wrote, because "You must simply crave the answers to the questions you pose." The question that took hold of her was why women's work looked so different across the long run of American history.

  242347203

• 4. The Gap Across Centuries

  ›

  Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women, published in 1990, traces the female labor force in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth. It challenged a common assumption. Many had believed that women's employment gains came from a social revolution. Goldin argued they came from long-run economic progress. She also showed that the gender wage gap has existed for centuries, shaped by social norms, the structure of labor markets, and legal restrictions.

  The book asked two questions. Why did female labor force participation rise so dramatically over the past half century, especially among married women? And why has the earnings gap between men and women been so persistent over that same period?

  In 1994, a working paper titled "The U-Shaped Female Labor Force Function in Economic Development and Economic History" offered a pattern. In agricultural societies, many women work. As industrialization advances, their participation declines, because of social norms and a labor market shifting toward male-dominated sectors. As education improves, women return to the workforce, which gives the curve its U shape. The framework helps explain trends across history and across countries.

  A 2014 paper, "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter", became one of her most cited. It argued that making jobs more flexible would do much to close the remaining gap. Technology, science, and healthcare have embraced flexible structures. Corporate business, finance, and law have been slower.

  Her 2021 book Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey Toward Equity pulled these threads together. It follows college-educated American women through the twentieth century as they tried to balance work and family, and it reaches the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Goldin rejects the idea that the gender gap is purely personal choice needing no policy response. Choices, she argues, are shaped by constraints from society, technology, law, and personal expectations.

  3941424344

• 5. The Pill And Quiet Revolution

  ›

  In August 2002, Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz published "The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women's Career and Marriage Decisions". Their argument was that birth control changed women's economic opportunities. The pill let women delay marriage and childbirth. That freed them to invest in higher education and careers, which raised their labor force participation and professional advancement.

  In May 2006, Goldin published "The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women's Employment, Education, and Family". It describes three phases of change across the twentieth century. In the early phase, few married women worked, and economic growth alone did not draw them into jobs.

  Slowly, other forces made work more attractive. The rise of "nice jobs" eased the stereotype against married women working. Education improved, and part-time work appeared. By the third phase, which began in the 1960s, young women were planning careers from the start.

  Goldin names several influences on that shift: the availability of the birth control pill, rising divorce rates, and changing social expectations. Women invested more in education and career-oriented fields, and they became more independent from their husbands. She calls the result the "quiet revolution".

  Another paper from 2006 turned to a related puzzle on college campuses, where women's presence had changed in ways few had predicted.

  454643383

• 6. Education And Technology

  ›

  "The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap" appeared in 2006 in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Goldin wrote it with Lawrence F. Katz and Ilyana Kuziemko. It explains the social dynamics behind the gender gap in college enrollment, beginning in the 1930s. Enrollment reached parity in the 1980s, and then the gap reversed.

  Goldin and Katz also wrote The Race Between Education and Technology, which treats technological change, education, and inequality as runners in a race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the supply of educated workers grew faster than demand for them. That boosted income for most people and reduced inequality. Since about 1980, the reverse has held, and a slowdown in education has come with rising inequality.

  One description of the book called it "a monumental achievement that supplies a unified framework for interpreting how the demand and supply of human capital have shaped the distribution of earnings in the U.S. labor market over the twentieth century". Alan Krueger of Princeton University said it "represented the best of what economics has to offer".

  The same partnership produced a 2016 paper on the value of postsecondary credentials in the labor market, an experimental study. Goldin's range extended further. With M. Alsan, she wrote "Watersheds in Child Mortality: The Role of Effective Water and Sewerage Infrastructure, 1880 to 1920" for the Journal of Political Economy. It examines how clean water and effective sewage systems affected infant mortality.

  With Katz she also wrote Women Working Longer: Increased Employment at Older Ages, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018.

  5051535455

• 7. First Woman Tenured

  ›

  Goldin's academic career began with an assistant professorship at the University of Wisconsin, from 1971 to 1973. She moved to Princeton University as an assistant professor from 1973 to 1979. At the University of Pennsylvania she was an associate professor from 1979 to 1985, then a full professor until 1990.

  In 1990, she joined the economics department at Harvard and became the first woman given tenure there. She was also the first female economist to be offered or to achieve tenure at Princeton and at Pennsylvania. In her 1998 essay she downplayed this record, saying she was "too young to be a pioneer".

  Her leadership roles accumulated. She edited the Journal of Economic History from 1984 to 1988. She served as president of the Economic History Association in 1999-2000 and of the American Economic Association in 2013. For 28 years, ending in 2017, she directed the Development of the American Economy program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She now co-directs its Gender in the Economy study group with Claudia Olivetti and Jessica Goldberg.

  In 2015, with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Goldin and Tatyana Avilova started the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge. The aim was to narrow the gender gap among economics majors. A one-year randomized trial gave twenty institutions the treatment and used sixty-eight others as controls. The trial tested whether light-touch, low-cost interventions could raise the number of female majors.

  The treatment, the researchers found, "may have been successful at liberal arts colleges and possibly at the larger universities that, in addition, had their own RCT".

  112343519

• 8. Honors, Dogs, And Views

  ›

  Goldin has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Society of Labor Economists, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She belongs to the National Academy of Sciences. Honorary doctorates have come from Lund University, the European University Institute, the University of Zurich, Dartmouth College, and the University of Rochester, among others.

  Her awards include the Richard A. Lester Award for outstanding book in industrial relations and labor economics, which she won in 1990, 2008, and 2021. In 2016 she received the IZA Prize in Labor Economics, and in 2019 the BBVA Foundation Frontiers in Knowledge Award. The BBC named her to its 100 Women list in 2023. In 2024, Time magazine put her among twelve women on its Women of the Year list.

  Her personal life is shared with a fellow Harvard economics professor, Lawrence F. Katz, her husband and frequent collaborator. Since 1970 she has kept Golden Retrievers, and the first was named Kelso. Pika, the couple's dog, died in 2024. Pika won recognition in competitive scenting, trained for obedience competitions, and worked as a therapy dog at a local nursing home. Goldin often speaks her ideas aloud to her dogs while she works out models and writes up results.

  She has also spoken on public matters. In December 2018, she cited historical rises in unrest during periods of rising income and wealth inequality. In June 2024, she was one of 16 economics laureates who signed an open letter warning that Donald Trump's fiscal and trade policies, combined with efforts to limit the Federal Reserve's independence, would reignite inflation. In 2025 she voiced concern about the removal and misuse of government data.

  In 2026, she helped WNBA players negotiate a 400% increase in their salaries.

  667717359