Claudia Goldin (b. 1946)

Who They Were

Claudia Goldin (born 1946) is an American economic historian at Harvard University and one of the leading scholars of the labour market in the United States. Working over a long career, she specialised in reconstructing the long-run economic history of American women - their employment, earnings and education stretching back into the nineteenth century. Because the relevant statistical series often did not exist in usable form, much of her research involved a substantial archival undertaking: assembling and reconstructing data from sources that had never been organised for this purpose. In 2023 she became the sole laureate of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences for having advanced our understanding of women's labour market outcomes, and she remains an influential figure in labour economics and economic history.

Key Contributions

Goldin's contribution was to build the long-run empirical record needed to understand how women's role in the paid economy changed over more than two centuries. By assembling and reconstructing data on women's employment, earnings and education in the United States, she traced how participation, occupations and pay evolved, and how education and family decisions interacted with the labour market. Her work illuminated the sources of persistent gaps between men's and women's earnings, including the effects of career timing and the demands of particular jobs. Her 2023 Nobel recognised this advancement of understanding of women's labour market outcomes, making her the third woman to receive the economics prize. Her historically grounded approach reshaped how economists study gender, work and pay.

On EconRecall

Harvard economic historian and 2023 Nobel laureate who advanced understanding of women's labour market outcomes. Play the games that feature Claudia Goldin:

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