The work of Harvard economist Claudia Goldin, who has studied the gender pay gap, has been recognized with the economics Nobel Prize.
Goldin, 77, received recognition for her studies demonstrating that, despite having greater levels of education, women get paid less than males on average, and that the majority of the discrepancy appears after motherhood.
“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 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
“Her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap.”
After Elinor Ostrom in 2009 and Esther Duflo in 2019, Goldin is the third woman to be given the Nobel Prize in economics, the field with the fewest female laureates.
In order to conduct her study, Goldin looked at data spanning 200 years of American women’s labor force involvement.
According to Goldin’s research, individual choices, such as educational preferences, as well as significant societal and economic developments influence a woman’s position in the labor market and her salary to some extent.
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,” the prize committee said. Historically, the earnings gap could be largely explained by differences in education and occupational choices.
Following the announcement of the prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, and peace last week, Goldin received his honor.
The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is the official name of the economics prize, which was established by the Swedish central bank in 1968.
The prize was awarded the previous year to Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip Dybvig for their study of bank failures that informed how the US responded to the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
On Friday, the Iranian woman’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.