Harvard University’s Claudia Goldin to Receive the Nobel Prize in Economics

Claudia Goldin, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University, has been selected to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Women are vastly underrepresented in the global labor market and, when they work, they earn less than men. Professor Goldin has collected over 200 years of data from the U.S., allowing her to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time. Historically, much of the gender gap in earnings could be explained by differences in education and occupational choices. However, Dr. Goldin has shown that the bulk of this earnings difference is now between men 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 market 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.

Professor Goldin, who is a past president of the American Economic Association and the Economic History Association, is the author or co-author of several books including Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (Oxford University Press, 1990). From 1984 to 1988 she was editor of the Journal of Economic History.

Dr. Goldin joined the faculty at Harvard in 1990. She was the first woman offered tenure in the university’s economics department. Earlier in her career, she taught at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin.

Professor Goldin is a graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago.