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Portrait of Claudia Goldin
Photo: Editing1088, Own work · CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences · 2023

Claudia Goldin

She dug 200 years of hidden women's work out of the archives and showed why women still earn less than men.

The Nobel citation: “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”
Born
May 14, 1946, New York, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time
Harvard University, USA

Economics prize

2023

Awarded alone.

Age that year

77years

Born in 1946.

Sources cited

26

Fact-checked September 24, 2026.

  • She became the first woman tenured in Harvard's economics department. The year before Harvard's 1989 offer, five of its nearly 70 economics professors were women, none tenured.
  • In 2023 she became the third woman to win the economics prize and the first to win it alone.
  • In the National Archives she found 1939 surveys asking firms if they barred married women or fired women who wed. With no anti-bias law yet, managers replied openly.
  • Her family attended an Orthodox synagogue and kept a kosher home so her grandparents could visit, but ate lobster and Chinese food outside it.
  • She advised the WNBA players' union without pay. Its March 2026 contract raised players' salaries nearly 400 percent over seven years.

The breakthrough

Rebuilding 200 years of women's work and pay

Official records long hid much of women's work. Old censuses often listed a married woman's job as simply "wife," even if she kept boarders, worked the family farm or helped run the family shop. Like a detective who realizes half the witnesses were never interviewed, Goldin went looking for the missing evidence: city directories, forgotten government surveys in the National Archives, and boxes of old questionnaires. From them she rebuilt more than 200 years of US data on women's jobs and pay. Her corrected numbers showed that married women's paid work did not simply rise as the economy grew. It traced a U. It fell in the 1800s as work moved from homes and farms into factories, then climbed in the 1900s as office and service jobs spread and schooling grew. Along the way she documented "marriage bars", rules that fired women from teaching and office jobs when they married, and showed that young women's plans, shaped by their mothers' lives, changed only slowly. With Lawrence Katz she showed that the birth-control pill, which reached young single women in different states in different years, helped women delay marriage and train for law, medicine and other professions. Finally, she showed that most of today's pay gap is between men and women in the same job, and that it opens with the first child, because many top jobs reward long, unpredictable hours.[2],[3],[4],[14],[15],[16]

“I was slighting the family member who would undergo the most profound change over the long run – the wife and mother.”
Claudia Goldin, Recalling, in her Nobel autobiography, why she turned from studying whole families in the late 1970s to studying married women's work.[2]

What it meant for humanity

Goldin did not invent a drug or a machine. What she produced is knowledge that changed how people understand women's work and what can be done about the pay gap. Before her 1990 book, researchers had mostly studied twentieth-century data and assumed that women's paid work rose as economies grew. She showed a longer, uneven story and pinned down the barriers: rules that pushed women out of jobs when they married, expectations formed a generation earlier, and, today, jobs that pay a premium for being always available. That moved the debate from whether women earn less to why, and toward concrete remedies, such as jobs that do not pay a big premium for long or particular hours, more flexible work, and support for returning to work after children. The Nobel committee notes that studies in other countries have confirmed her finding that parenthood drives most of the modern pay gap. Her work also reached courts and public debate. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited her study of screened orchestra auditions, which became a standard example in arguments about bias in hiring, though its statistical strength is now disputed. She also tried to change who studies economics. As president of the American Economic Association in 2013 she set out to learn why so few women major in it, and in 2015 she launched a randomized trial of low-cost ways to attract them, which worked at liberal arts colleges but showed no overall effect at large universities. And she volunteered her skills to women athletes, helping the WNBA players' union argue with data for a fairer share of league revenue.

  • Her 1990 book Understanding the Gender Gap gave the first comprehensive economic history of American women's work and pay, built partly from records she recovered reaching back to the 1790s.[2],[3],[4],[6]
  • Her corrections showed that in the late 1800s the employment rate of married women was almost three times what the census had recorded.[4]
  • With Marianne Bertrand and Lawrence Katz she found that male and female MBAs start on nearly equal pay, but 10 to 16 years later men earn roughly 80 percent more (almost 60 log points), mostly because of career breaks and shorter hours after children.[16]
  • With Cecilia Rouse she estimated that screened auditions explain about 30 percent of the rise in women's share of new hires at major US orchestras after 1970, when women were about 6 percent of the top five's players. Critics say the data are too noisy.[13],[18],[26]
  • Her Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge, a trial with 20 treatment and 68 control schools, raised women's share of economics majors at liberal arts colleges.[17]
  • Working unpaid for the WNBA players' union, she used attendance and TV-audience data to argue for a bigger revenue share. The 2026 deal raised the average salary from about $118,000 to more than $580,000.[23],[24]

Impact in numbers

Goldin's contribution is understanding, so we record no quantified impact claim. Her data and explanations changed how economists, policymakers and the public think about when and why women work for pay and why they earn less. They also point to specific levers: how jobs reward long, inflexible hours, how couples share care, and how early expectations shape women's schooling. But no published study measures how many people gained, or how much money, because of her research rather than because of the laws, court rulings, employers and social movements that acted on similar evidence. The pill she studied, the screened auditions she evaluated and the marriage bars she documented were all created or ended by others, so crediting their effects to her would double count. Her clearest direct effects are small or recent: more women majoring in economics at some colleges in her trial, and the 2026 WNBA contract she advised, which falls after the 2025 cutoff our impact totals use.

EconomyWomen's rightsEducationFundamental science

No number is given here on purpose. Some contributions cannot be counted honestly, and we would rather describe them than invent a figure.

The double edge

We found no documented harm from Goldin's work, so no harm is quantified. Her controversies are scholarly. Her most retold finding, that screened orchestra auditions helped women get hired, has been challenged. In 2019, after a critique by Jonatan Pallesen, Columbia statistician Andrew Gelman argued that the paper's estimates were too noisy to support the confident "50 percent" figure repeated in popular accounts. Commentators also pointed to a 2017 Australian public-service trial in which hiding applicants' sex made managers less likely to shortlist women. The paper itself had warned that some key estimates were not statistically significant and that one result pointed the other way. Separately, economists disagree about how general her U-shaped pattern is. A 2014 cross-country study by Isis Gaddis and Stephan Klasen found only feeble support for the U as a worldwide trend of development, while the Nobel committee says the pattern holds in many countries.

  • Minor

    Doubts about the blind-audition evidence

    Goldin and Rouse's 2000 study is widely cited as proof that hiding a candidate's sex reduces bias. In 2019 statistician Andrew Gelman, following Jonatan Pallesen, argued that many of its estimates had large standard errors and could not support the headline "50 percent" claim, though he noted the authors had stated these limits. A 2017 Australian government trial found that anonymized CVs reduced women's shortlisting.[13],[18],[19]

  • Minor

    Is the U-shaped curve universal?

    Goldin documented a U-shaped path for married women's work in US history. Gaddis and Klasen (2014) found that cross-country support for the U as a general trend of economic development is feeble, depends on the data used and vanishes in some statistical models. The Nobel committee, by contrast, says the U holds in many countries.[4],[20]

Against the odds

Goldin grew up in postwar New York, as American attitudes toward Jews improved after the Holocaust, and no source records her facing antisemitism herself. The change was recent. When World War II ended, antisemitism was still widespread in America, and most medical schools still capped the number of Jewish students; those quotas were gone only by 1970. Her own profession had a similar past: before the war Jews were rarely found on American faculties, Harvard's economics chairman in 1940 was known to dislike Jews, and around 1950 Penn's tenured economics faculty included only one Jewish economist, whose post was shared with statistics. Goldin went on to become the first woman tenured in economics at both Penn and Harvard. The barriers she describes met her as a woman. At Chicago she was one of two women in a class with about 45 to 50 men, and there were no women on the faculty, though she says her teachers cared only about her ideas. Princeton denied her tenure in 1979, which she puts down to its lack of interest in economic history. In the year before Harvard offered her tenure in 1989, five of its nearly 70 economics professors were women, and none had tenure. As a child in Parkchester, where Catholics outnumbered Jews, she recalls believing America was a Catholic nation.

  • —

    Quota

    Context rather than a barrier she personally met: most US medical schools capped Jewish admissions from the 1920s, antisemitism was still widespread when World War II ended, and the quotas were gone only by 1970, around the time Goldin finished graduate school.[22]

  • —

    Discrimination

    Decades before she arrived, leading economics departments were reluctant to hire Jews. Harvard's economics chairman around 1940 was known to dislike Jews, and around 1950 some at Penn thought adding one more Jewish economist to its tenured faculty was moving too quickly. She later became the first woman tenured in economics at both universities.[2],[11],[21]

  • 1989

    Other

    She entered a field with very few women. Her Chicago graduate class had two women alongside about 45 to 50 men, and classes then were 5 to 10 percent female. In the year before Harvard's 1989 offer, all five women among its nearly 70 economics professors were untenured.[10],[11],[25]

Jewish background

Both parents JewishCulturally Jewish

Goldin was born in the Bronx in 1946 to Jewish parents: Leon Goldin, a data-processing manager, and Lucille Rosansky Goldin, a Hunter College graduate who became a Bronx school administrator. She has said the family attended an Orthodox synagogue and kept a kosher home so her paternal grandparents could visit, though her mother allowed non-kosher food outside it. Jewish media covered her Nobel as a Jewish laureate, and Miriam's Cup, which honors a Jewish woman of achievement each year, chose her in 2024. She jokes about Jewish customs, marking her dog's 13th birthday as a bark mitzvah. No source describes her current religious practice.[2],[6],[7],[8],[9]

Key dates

  1. May 14, 1946

    Born in New York City and raised in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, the younger daughter of Leon and Lucille Goldin.[1],[2],[6],[9]

  2. 1967

    Graduates from Cornell in economics, having switched from microbiology after a class with Alfred Kahn.[2],[12]

  3. 1972

    Earns her PhD at the University of Chicago with a dissertation on slavery in the cities of the antebellum South.[2],[3],[6]

  4. 1973

    Joins Princeton as an assistant professor after two years at the University of Wisconsin.[2]

  5. 1979

    Denied tenure at Princeton, she moves to the University of Pennsylvania, where she later becomes its first woman tenured in economics.[2],[11]

  6. November 1989

    Harvard moves to offer her tenure; she joins in 1990 as the first tenured woman in its economics department.[2],[10]

  7. 1990

    Publishes Understanding the Gender Gap, the first comprehensive economic history of American women's work.[2],[4],[6]

  8. 2000

    With Cecilia Rouse, publishes the study of screened (blind) orchestra auditions and women's hiring.[2],[13],[18]

  9. 2002

    With Lawrence Katz, publishes "The Power of the Pill" on contraception and women's careers.[2],[4],[14]

  10. 2013

    Serves as president of the American Economic Association.[2]

  11. 2015

    Launches the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge, a randomized trial to draw more women into economics.[17]

  12. 2021

    Publishes Career and Family, tracing a century of college-educated women's efforts to combine the two.[2]

  13. October 9, 2023

    Awarded the economics prize alone, for advancing understanding of women's labor market outcomes; lectures in Stockholm on 8 December.[3],[5],[12]

  14. March 2026

    The WNBA players' union, which she advised without pay, wins a contract raising salaries nearly 400 percent over seven years.[23]

Sources

  1. 1.Claudia Goldin - Facts · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
  2. 2.Claudia Goldin - Biographical: The Economist as Detective · NobelPrize.org (The Nobel Foundation), 2024
  3. 3.The Prize in Economic Sciences 2023 - Press release (9 October 2023) · NobelPrize.org (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), 2023
  4. 4.History helps us understand gender differences in the labour market (Popular science background) · NobelPrize.org (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), 2023
  5. 5.Claudia Goldin - Prize lecture: An Evolving Economic Force (8 December 2023) · NobelPrize.org, 2023
  6. 6.How curiosity, intelligence and a supportive mom prepared a Bronx-born Jewish girl to win the Nobel Prize (Andrew Silverstein) · The Forward, 2023
  7. 7.Economics Nobel awarded to Claudia Goldin for work on women in the labor market (Ron Kampeas) · Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2023
  8. 8.2024: Claudia Goldin · Miriam's Cup, 2024
  9. 9.Lucille Rosansky Goldin obituary · The Daily Camera (via Legacy.com), 2020
  10. 10.Ec Seeks to Tenure First Woman Prof · The Harvard Crimson, 1989
  11. 11.Studying 'why women are interesting, and men are boring' (Christy DeSmith) · Harvard Gazette, 2024
  12. 12.Claudia Goldin '67 wins Nobel Prize in Economics (Blaine Friedlander) · Cornell Chronicle, 2023
  13. 13.Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians (Goldin C, Rouse C), American Economic Review 90(4):715-741 · American Economic Association, 2000
  14. 14.The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women's Career and Marriage Decisions (Goldin C, Katz LF), NBER Working Paper 7527 · National Bureau of Economic Research, 2000
  15. 15.A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter (Goldin C), American Economic Review 104(4):1091-1119 · American Economic Association, 2014
  16. 16.Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Corporate and Financial Sectors (Bertrand M, Goldin C, Katz LF), NBER Working Paper 14681 · National Bureau of Economic Research, 2009
  17. 17.What Did UWE Do for Economics? (Avilova T, Goldin C), NBER Working Paper 31432 · National Bureau of Economic Research, 2023
  18. 18.Did blind orchestra auditions really benefit women? (Andrew Gelman) · Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (Columbia University blog), 2019
  19. 19.A Famous Study Found That Blind Auditions Reduced Sexism in the Orchestra. Or Did It? (Robby Soave) · Reason, 2019
  20. 20.Economic development, structural change, and women's labor force participation: A reexamination of the feminization U hypothesis (Gaddis I, Klasen S), Journal of Population Economics 27(3):639-681 · RePEc/IDEAS (Springer), 2014
  21. 21.MIT's Openness to Jewish Economists (E. Roy Weintraub), CHOPE Working Paper 2013-05 · Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University, 2013
  22. 22.Why Did the United States Medical School Admissions Quota for Jews End? (Halperin EC), American Journal of the Medical Sciences 358:317-325 · PubMed (Elsevier), 2019
  23. 23.A Nobel laureate's assist to women's basketball pros (Christy DeSmith) · Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 2026
  24. 24.TIME100 Most Influential People in Sports 2026: Claudia Goldin (Sean Gregory) · TIME, 2026
  25. 25.Fifteen Questions: Claudia D. Goldin on the Nobel Prize, Women in Economics, and the Barbie Movie · The Harvard Crimson, 2024
  26. 26.Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians (research summary) · Gender Action Portal, Harvard Kennedy School

Fact-checked on September 24, 2026 by a separate AI fact-checking pass that re-opened the sources, with 8 corrections made. How we check

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