Profile of Harvard Economist Claudia Goldin – IMF Finance & Development Magazine | December 2018
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: PETER J WALKER
- Published: December 1, 2018
Career and biography
- Claudia Goldin: born in 1946 in the Bronx, New York City.
- Described as a 72-year-old economic historian, labor economist, and gender expert (as of the article).
- Education: undergraduate major in history and economics at Cornell University; doctorate in industrial organization and labor economics, University of Chicago, 1972.
- Key positions and honors:
- First woman to receive tenure in economics at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
- President of the American Economic Association in 2013–14.
- IZA Prize in Labor Economics, 2016.
- Society of Labor Economists’ Mincer Prize for lifetime contributions, 2009.
- Longstanding roles:
- Director of the Development of the American Economy (DAE) Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) for 28 years ending in 2017.
- NBER described as 98-year-old and based near the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Major research contributions and themes
- Pioneered the study of women’s role in the economy roughly 40 years ago and helped bring gender economics into the mainstream.
- Broad research topics over four decades include: the economic effects of technological change, inequality, education, water pollution, and corruption.
- Coauthor with Lawrence Katz of The Race between Education and Technology (2008), analyzing income inequality pre- and post-1980 and the role of skill-biased technological change.
- Coedited Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America’s Economic History (2006) with Edward L. Glaeser, identifying the free press as a fundamental factor in the decline of American public corruption between 1870 and 1920.
- Recent empirical work with Marcella Alsan: "Watersheds in Child Mortality: The Role of Effective Water and Sewerage Infrastructure, 1880 to 1920" (2018) — analysis of Boston data finding that a third of the decline in child mortality resulted from clean water and effective sewage systems.
Findings on women's labor force participation and the gender pay gap
- Historical analyses covering 200 years show gender wage gaps characterized by distinct spells of narrowing, including:
- early 19th century with mechanization,
- early 20th century with the rise of clerical work,
- the 1980s with gains in women’s educational attainment.
- In Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (1990), Goldin documents intermittent work patterns for women in earlier periods and limited control over employment decisions after marriage.
- In the 2006 paper "The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family," Goldin identifies four phases shaping women’s role in the US economy:
- "independent female worker," up to the 1920s;
- "easing the constraints on married women in the labor force," 1930s–1950s;
- "roots of the revolution," 1950s–1970s;
- "the quiet revolution" starting in the late 1970s.
- In the 2014 paper "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter," Goldin finds that most of the wage gap reflects the high cost of "temporal flexibility" — women working fewer or more flexible hours to raise a family — rather than primarily discrimination.
- Policy implication from this research: narrowing the gender pay gap will depend on restructuring jobs to incorporate greater flexibility for all workers, thereby reducing the costs associated with flexibility. Goldin notes that sectors such as technology, science, and health care have already shifted toward more flexible job structures.
Policy recommendations and practical implications
- Job design: restructure jobs to incorporate greater temporal flexibility for all workers to reduce the wage penalty associated with family-related flexibility.
- Public health infrastructure: for low-income countries seeking to reduce child mortality, prioritize building clean water and sewage systems, which historically accounted for a third of the decline in child mortality in Boston between 1880 and 1920.
- Media and governance: maintaining a vigorous, independent, free press is highlighted as a key factor in reducing public corruption, based on historical analysis.
Programs, outreach, and legacy
- Undergraduate Women in Economics Program (started 2014):
- Aims to encourage more female economics majors.
- Notes that the ratio of undergraduate men to women majoring in economics has been stuck at 3-to-1 for 20 years.
- Program focuses on a randomly selected group of 20 US universities and colleges that produce about 25 economics majors a year.
- Offers small grants of about $12,500 to encourage women to pursue economics degrees.
- Mentorship and institutional impact:
- Credited with expanding the scope of the NBER’s DAE Program to include researchers from a host of fields using historical materials and economic history methodology.
- Praised for creating a productive research environment combining economic theory and historical evidence.
- Personal notes reflecting legacy:
- Collaborates and shares life with Larry Katz; jokingly refers to NBER as the "National Bureau of Economic Romance."
- Maintains a Harvard web page documenting her dog Pika’s achievements as a competitive scent dog; Pika described as eight-year-old in the article.
Profile by Peter J. Walker, Finance and Development Magazine, December 2018.
Content in this bundle
- رحالة عبر الزمن
- Semblanza De La Economista De Harvard Claudia Goldin
- Portrait Economiste De Harvard Claudia Goldin
- Profile of Harvard Economist Claudia Goldin – IMF Finance & Development Magazine | December 2018