2023 Nobel Prize in Economics considered worthy Thanks to Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin for her research on the key drivers of gender differences in the labor market.
“Until a certain point, gender differences in the labor market were not the focus of experts’ attention. Claudia Goldin was one of the first people to delve into this topic. Her research is highly insightful and rich in qualitative empirical evidence, showing how women can be integrated more effectively into the economy and how gender pay gaps can be closed. Now the results of his work may seem quite obvious to some, but when the professor began his research in the 1970-1980s, everything seemed completely new. He actually opened the way to a new research direction,” the acting director told socialbites.ca. Head of the Department of Political Economy, Faculty of Economics, Moscow State University. Lomonosov Alexander Maltsev.
women’s question
The laureate presented the first comprehensive report on women’s earnings and their place in the labor market in the last 200 years. Goldin has spent her life researching the pay gap between men and women, trying to answer the question: “Why do women earn less?” As a result, Goldin offered an explanation that had not been seriously considered before.
Goldin found that despite modernization, economic growth, and an increase in women’s share in the 20th century, the income gap between men and women remained almost unchanged. Typically, the main factors in calculating the wage gap were education and experience, after which they began to pay attention to others: industry, position, etc. Claudia Goldin said that family characteristics, especially women going on maternity leave and having children, should also be taken into account. The same delay is currently occurring that prevents women from receiving equal pay as men.
“This is the so-called motherhood penalty in the labor market. When a woman returns to work after maternity leave, she loses experience and therefore salary. This, says Goldin, is at the root of the gap that has widened over time. Interestingly, more educated women receive less after maternity leave than men.
Claudia also considered the issue of demographic revolutions: Women realized that they wanted to reach the top and make a career, and therefore postponed motherhood. This has led to us now seeing a downward trend in the birth rate. Women want to be more equal in terms of rights and want to understand that this loss occurs during pregnancy, professor of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University Elena Vakulenko told socialbites.ca.
However, Goldin did not offer possible solutions to gender problems in her works. According to Maltsev, this is due to the characteristics of economic sciences.
“Historical retrospective is extremely important for the social sciences: in this case, Goldin’s data-driven research shows how the role of women changed as the economy transitioned from agriculture to the industrial and post-industrial state. “Countries around the world are at different stages of socio-economic development, and thanks to this type of research we can understand where they will go in the future and what changes their labor markets will undergo,” he said.
Women in Russia
However, Claudia Goldin’s findings on the gender pay gap are not supported by Russian data. Labor market researchers Lyudmila Ruzhanskaya, professor of the UrFU School of Economics and Management, and Elena Kotyrlo, professor of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University, told socialbites.ca.
“We have a small difference between men and childless women; salaries are comparable. On the one hand, this is a good thing, but from a demographic perspective it creates problems. Increasing wages for women puts a mine under the “traditional” family model; most likely this model will change in the future, but it is difficult to say how this will happen,” says Ruzhanskaya.
The conclusion on equal pay for men and women in Russia was confirmed by socialbites.ca by Elena Kotyrlo, professor of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University, who conducted her own research on this issue.
According to Professor Ruzhanskaya, the current situation in the Russian labor market may be replaced by women, as the number of qualified employees, including men, is decreasing.
“If there is a shortage of qualified personnel, the demand for women’s labor will increase, their salaries will most likely increase and new opportunities for career development will also emerge. In addition, digitalization also plays a role: it reduces gender gaps and enables women to access types of jobs that they were previously unable to access, for example due to lower physical strength. “With workplace automation, this gap is reduced,” said the expert.
Also in Russia, women’s industries are protected – teachers and educators are considered women’s professions and, as a rule, receive lower wages. At the same time, even in “men’s industries” the gap is narrowing significantly: both women and men receive approximately equal wages.
According to Elena Kotyrlo, the lack of a gender pay gap in Russia is explained by the fact that the country went through the socialist period, when, as VI said, “every cook was able to lead the state.” Lenin. Therefore, the results of the labor market analysis in Russia do not coincide with the results on gender differences in wages for men and women in the United States, whose data were analyzed by Claudia Goldin.
Science Obsessed
Claudia Dale Goldin wanted to become a scientist and microbiologist since childhood, but fate decreed otherwise. At the age of 77, she became the third woman in history to receive the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
Goldin graduated from Bronx High School and then attended Cornell University, where she graduated with honors.
“As far back as I can remember, I dreamed of becoming a scientist. When I was little, the idea of looking through a microscope and discovering a whole world was exciting. As a teenager, I thought I knew everything in the world. But then I went to college at Cornell University and instantly discovered how little I really knew. This upset me at first, but then it inspired me. So I became what you might call a humanities nerd. And I tried everything: I tried to study anthropology, literature. However, my inclination towards mathematics prevented me from realizing myself in these areas,” Goldin admits. report To Douglas Clement, editor of Region magazine (this is the economics magazine of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis).
He says he later discovered economics and was fascinated by it. He received a master’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago in 1972 and a doctorate in economics from the same university. Claudia Goldin’s mentors at that time were future Nobel laureates Gary Becker and Robert Vogel.
Then began a series of career victories. Goldin was the recipient of numerous professional awards: the first woman appointed to Harvard’s economics department, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and many more. She is frequently ranked among the ten most influential female economists in the world.
He admits that his passion is raw data. He enjoys rummaging through long-buried library files, dusty school records, and obscure newspaper articles.
“As an economic historian, I interpret the present through the prism of the past.” “I basically explore the roots of issues of current concern,” Goldin said in the same interview.
Goldin made her mark on economics with her pioneering research on urban slavery, the impact of technological change on wage structures, and the role of education in reducing inequality. She later devoted herself to the labor history of American women.
“I started with this question: Why have men and women throughout history called some professions feminine and others masculine? Take milking cows, for example. In the Midwest, men said it was a woman’s job. But oddly enough, in the East, this was seen as a man’s job. I wanted to find the roots of this,” Goldin said.
Goldin’s latest work concerns not only maternal punishments but also marital punishments. In her articles, Goldin argues that the salaries of people with a civil marriage are lower than those with a civil marriage. According to him, this is due to the fact that people who do not legalize their relationships tend to change jobs more often. Therefore, they can only be retained with a large salary.