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Claudia Goldin
Claudia Goldin (3x4 cropped).jpg
Goldin in 2019
Born (1946-05-14) May 14, 1946 (age 79)
The Bronx, New York City, U.S.
Education
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
Thesis The Economics of Urban Slavery: 1820 to 1860 (1972)
Doctoral advisor Robert Fogel
Doctoral students

Claudia Dale Goldin (born May 14, 1946) is an American economic historian and labor economist. This means she studies how people work and earn money throughout history. She is a professor of economics at Harvard University.

In October 2023, she won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. She received this award for helping us understand why there are differences in how men and women earn money. She was the third woman to win this prize. She was also the first woman to win it all by herself!

Claudia Goldin helps lead a group called the National Bureau of Economic Research's (NBER) Gender in the Economy study group. She used to direct the NBER's program about the American Economy from 1989 to 2017. She is most famous for her historical work on women and the economy in the United States. In 1990, she became the first woman to get a permanent teaching position (called tenure) in Harvard's economics department. She was also the president of the American Economic Association in 2013.

About Claudia Goldin

Early Life and School

Claudia Goldin was born in the Bronx, New York City, on May 14, 1946. Her family was Jewish. Her dad, Leon Goldin, managed computer data. Her mom, Lucille Rosansky Goldin, was a school principal.

When she was a kid, Claudia wanted to be an archaeologist. But after reading a book about tiny living things (microbes), she became interested in studying bacteriology. In high school, she took a summer class in microbiology at Cornell University. She then went to Cornell to study microbiology.

In her second year of college, she took an economics class. Her teacher, Alfred Kahn, showed her how exciting economics could be. He used economics to find hidden truths, just like the microbe stories had done for her. She earned her first degree in economics from Cornell in 1967. She then got her master's degree and PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1969 and 1972. Her PhD paper was about slavery in American cities before the Civil War.

Her Career

After finishing her studies, Claudia Goldin taught economics at several universities. These included the University of Wisconsin, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1990, she joined Harvard University. There, she made history by becoming the first woman to receive tenure in the economics department. This meant she had a permanent teaching job.

She has led important groups like the American Economic Association and the Economic History Association. Many organizations have chosen her as a fellow, which is a special honor. She has also received several honorary doctorates from different universities.

In 2015, Claudia Goldin started a project to help more women study economics in college. It was called the Undergraduate Women in Economics (UWE) Challenge. She wanted to see if small changes could encourage more young women to choose economics as their major. The project found that these efforts might have helped at some colleges.

For 28 years, until 2017, Goldin directed a program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). This program focused on how the American economy developed over time.

What She Researches

Claudia Goldin has done a lot of important research. She studied the American Civil War and slavery. For example, she wrote a book called Urban Slavery in the American South, 1820 to 1860: A Quantitative History in 1976.

However, she is best known for her work on women and the American economy. Her book Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (1990) tells the story of women's jobs in the U.S. from the late 1700s to the late 1900s.

After that, she started looking into the history of education in the U.S. She wrote about how high schools grew and how higher education changed. She also worked with Lawrence Katz to understand why there are differences in earnings in America. Their book, The Race between Education and Technology (2008), explains that good schools helped the U.S. become a rich nation.

She also studied how a college education helps people in the job market.

Claudia Goldin has also researched other topics. These include how newspapers can help stop corruption. She also looked at how clean water systems helped reduce babies dying between 1880 and 1920.

She has published many important papers about gender. One famous paper, written with Cecilia Rouse, was about how "blind" auditions changed who got into orchestras. In these auditions, judges couldn't see the musicians, which helped more women get hired. She also studied why there is still a difference in how much men and women earn. Her book Career & Family: Women's Century-Long Journey toward Equity (2021) looks at how college-educated women have tried to balance their jobs and families over the last century. It also talks about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected women's careers.

Her Personal Life

Claudia Goldin is married to Lawrence Katz, who is also an economics professor at Harvard. She loves Golden Retriever dogs and has had them since 1970. Her current dog, Pika, is very special. Pika has won awards in scenting competitions and is also a therapy dog at a nursing home.

Awards She Has Won

  • 1990, 2008, 2021: Richard A. Lester Award for Outstanding Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics (three times!)
  • 1991: Allan Sharlin Memorial Book Award
  • 2005: Carolyn Shaw Bell Award
  • 2008: R.R. Hawkins Award
  • 2009: Jacob Mincer Award
  • 2009: The John R. Commons Award
  • 2016: IZA Prize in Labor Economics for her work on women in education and the job market
  • 2019: BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for her work on the gender gap
  • 2020: Clarivate Citation laureate in Economic Sciences
  • 2020: Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics
  • 2021: Society for Progress Medal
  • 2022: Visionary Award from the Council for Economic Education
  • 2023: Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
  • 2023: Included in BBC's 100 Women list
  • 2024: One of twelve women in Time magazine's Women of the Year list

Selected Books

  • Goldin, Claudia Dale. Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, ISBN: 978-0-19-505077-6.
  • Goldin, Claudia Dale et al. Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, ISBN: 978-0-226-30112-9.
  • Goldin, Claudia Dale and Gary D. Libecap. Regulated Economy: A Historical Approach to Political Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, ISBN: 978-0-226-30110-5.
  • Bordo, Michael D., Claudia Dale Goldin, and Eugene Nelson White. The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, ISBN: 978-0-226-06589-2.
  • Glaeser, Edward L. and Claudia Dale Goldin. Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006, ISBN: 978-0-226-29957-0.
  • Goldin, Claudia Dale and Lawrence F. Katz. The Race Between Education and Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-674-02867-8.
  • Goldin, Claudia and Alsan, M. "Watersheds in Child Mortality: The Role of Effective Water and Sewerage Infrastructure, 1880 to 1920", Journal of Political Economy 127(2, 2018), pp. 586–638
  • Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence F. Katz. Women Working Longer: Increased Employment at Older Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. ISBN: 978-0-226-53250-9
  • Goldin, Claudia. Career & Family: Women's Century-Long Journey toward Equity. Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-0-691-20178-8
  • "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter," American Economic Review 104 (April 2014), pp. 1091–119.

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Claudia Goldin para niños

  • List of Jewish Nobel laureates
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