Yahoo Finance Claudia Goldin awarded Nobel economics prize for research on gender gaps in labour market
The 2023 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, more commonly known as the Nobel prize for economics, has been awarded to Claudia Goldin for advancing the understanding the position of women in the labour market.
"Women are vastly underrepresented in the global labour market and, when they work, they earn less than men," the committee said in a press release.
"Claudia Goldin has trawled the archives and collected over 200 years of data from the US, allowing her to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time."
Her research showed that female participation in the labour market did not have an upward trend over this entire period, but instead forms a U-shaped curve.
The participation of married women decreased with the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society in the early nineteenth century, but then started to increase with the growth of the service sector in the early twentieth century, the release added.
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Goldin explained this pattern as the result of structural change and evolving social norms regarding women’s responsibilities for home and family.
Historically, much of the gender gap in earnings could be explained by differences in education and occupational choices. However, Goldin has shown that the bulk of this earnings difference is now between women in the same occupation, and that it largely arises with the birth of the first child.
“Understanding women’s role in the labour 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,” said Jakob Svensson, chair of the committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2023 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Claudia Goldin “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes.”#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/FRAayC3Jwb— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 9, 2023
Goldin will receive 11 million Swedish kronor (about £820,000, or $1m).
2022's prize went to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their research on banks and financial crises.
Bernanke is a former Federal Reserve chairman who steered the central bank through the financial crisis of 2008. He received the award with fellow economists Diamond and Dybvig.
The trio sought to highlight the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial crises, as well as how to regulate financial markets, and why avoiding bank collapses is vital.
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