77-year-old woman wins Nobel economics prize for work on gender pay gap

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2 years ago

A 77-year-old academic, who currently teaches labour market history at Harvard University in the US, Claudia Goldin, has been awarded this year’s Nobel economics prize after her research uncovered key drivers behind the gender pay gap.

Goldin, an American economic historian is the third woman to receive the prize but has broken record as the first that won’t share the award with male colleagues.

According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, she had “advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes. 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.”

The academy pointed to her work examining 200 years of data on the US workforce, showing how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates changed over time, adding that “her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap.”

Her research found that married women started to work less after the arrival of industrialisation in the 1800s, but their employment picked up again in the 1900s as the service economy grew.

Higher educational levels for women and the contraceptive pill accelerated change, but the gender pay gap remained.

While historically that earnings difference between men and women could be blamed on educational choices made at a young age and career choices, Prof Goldin found that the current earnings gap was now largely due to the impact of having children.

“Claudia Goldin’s discoveries have vast societal implications. She has shown us that the nature of this problem or the source of this underlying gender gap changes throughout history and with the course of development,” Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the committee awarding the prize said.

Describing her as “a detective,” Prof Hjalmarsson said her work had provided a foundation for policymakers in this area around the world.

Globally, about 50% of women participate in the labour market compared to 80% of men, but women earn less and are less likely to reach the top of the career ladder, the prize committee noted.

Elinor Ostrom was the first woman to win the economics prize in 2009, which she was awarded jointly with Oliver E Williamson for research on economic governance.

In 2019 Esther Duflo shared the award with her husband Abhijit Banerjee, and Michael Kremer, for work that focused on poor communities in India and Kenya.

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