WEBVTT 00:00:00.081 --> 00:00:02.045 - [Claudia] When you do economic research, 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.648 you have three pieces. 00:00:05.648 --> 00:00:07.348 I think of them as balls 00:00:07.348 --> 00:00:10.610 that I want floating up all the time. 00:00:10.610 --> 00:00:12.272 I'm juggling them, 00:00:12.632 --> 00:00:15.850 and one of them is the idea. 00:00:15.850 --> 00:00:17.647 I have to begin with "What's the question, 00:00:17.647 --> 00:00:19.327 what's important?" 00:00:19.327 --> 00:00:20.838 ♪ [music] ♪ 00:00:20.838 --> 00:00:22.139 - [Narrator] Economists -- 00:00:22.139 --> 00:00:26.099 not a group with a lot of Marys, Natashas, or Juanitas, 00:00:26.099 --> 00:00:28.682 and that's caused a lot of controversy. 00:00:28.682 --> 00:00:32.548 However, what's often overlooked are the actual female economists 00:00:32.548 --> 00:00:36.323 who are pushing economics forward by addressing real-world issues. 00:00:36.881 --> 00:00:39.679 Welcome to Women in Economics. 00:00:45.049 --> 00:00:47.226 - [Ilyana] One thing I definitely learned from Claudia 00:00:47.226 --> 00:00:49.950 is to approach economic research like a detective. 00:00:49.950 --> 00:00:52.684 I think, especially, when working in economic history, 00:00:52.684 --> 00:00:55.748 when you can't just download a cleaned-up dataset, 00:00:56.372 --> 00:00:59.517 you really have to go searching, open dusty boxes 00:00:59.517 --> 00:01:01.269 and look under rocks. 00:01:03.771 --> 00:01:07.215 - [Lawrence] She is the consummate economic historian. 00:01:07.215 --> 00:01:09.666 She has been the innovator and pioneer 00:01:09.666 --> 00:01:13.216 on bringing economic logic, and historical and better data, 00:01:13.216 --> 00:01:16.881 to understanding women's role in the economy. 00:01:16.881 --> 00:01:19.784 And then she is a fantastic labor economist, 00:01:19.784 --> 00:01:23.200 who had been a leader in work on understanding inequality. 00:01:26.516 --> 00:01:30.413 - [Narrator] Claudia Dale Goldin was born in 1946 in the Bronx. 00:01:31.184 --> 00:01:33.515 She was a problem-solver from the beginning. 00:01:34.506 --> 00:01:36.899 As a child, she avoided the New York City heat 00:01:36.899 --> 00:01:39.790 by spending her summer days playing cards or reading 00:01:39.790 --> 00:01:41.839 in air-conditioned department stores. 00:01:42.583 --> 00:01:43.800 And while she always knew 00:01:43.800 --> 00:01:46.733 she wanted to be a scientist of some kind, 00:01:46.733 --> 00:01:49.239 she wasn't always set on economics. 00:01:50.517 --> 00:01:51.965 - [Dev] She'll tell stories to me 00:01:51.965 --> 00:01:54.898 about when she first went to the Natural History Museum, 00:01:54.898 --> 00:01:56.400 when she was living in the Bronx, 00:01:56.400 --> 00:01:58.023 and fell in love with mummies 00:01:59.168 --> 00:02:02.169 and thought that archeology was going to be her passion. 00:02:02.598 --> 00:02:04.567 But then she discovered microbiology, 00:02:04.567 --> 00:02:07.353 and she suddenly realized that microscopes uncovered 00:02:07.353 --> 00:02:10.333 a whole new world of discovery for her. 00:02:10.333 --> 00:02:13.750 It wasn't until she actually went to college at Cornell 00:02:13.750 --> 00:02:16.202 that she first got introduced to economics. 00:02:16.765 --> 00:02:19.049 - [Claudia] I decided to become an economist 00:02:19.049 --> 00:02:21.683 because I took an economics class 00:02:21.683 --> 00:02:25.084 from an amazing person named Fred Kahn. 00:02:25.084 --> 00:02:30.517 He was so excited about the field of industrial organization 00:02:30.517 --> 00:02:33.449 and product markets and regulation 00:02:33.449 --> 00:02:35.585 that it was infectious. 00:02:36.034 --> 00:02:39.101 And in fact, when I went to graduate school 00:02:39.101 --> 00:02:40.434 at the University of Chicago, 00:02:40.434 --> 00:02:43.846 I went there to study Industrial Organization. 00:02:45.900 --> 00:02:48.216 - [Narrator] Under the mentorship of Bob Fogel, 00:02:48.216 --> 00:02:51.382 Claudia studied American Economic History, 00:02:51.382 --> 00:02:55.933 particularly the economics of slavery and the post-Civil War South. 00:02:55.933 --> 00:02:57.934 She had to travel to some southern states 00:02:57.934 --> 00:03:00.981 to gather archival materials for this research. 00:03:00.981 --> 00:03:04.320 Goldin didn't approach this trip like a traditional economist. 00:03:04.833 --> 00:03:06.617 - [Lawrence] She thought what I should do 00:03:06.617 --> 00:03:09.915 is hitchhike between the different cities in the south. 00:03:09.915 --> 00:03:12.067 She met somebody from one of the archives 00:03:12.067 --> 00:03:13.529 who let her stay at their place, 00:03:13.529 --> 00:03:14.951 and when she came back, 00:03:14.951 --> 00:03:18.468 her advisor asked her for a list of the receipts and expenses 00:03:18.468 --> 00:03:19.749 associated with the trip, 00:03:19.749 --> 00:03:21.395 and she had no clue 00:03:21.395 --> 00:03:24.167 that you were supposed to actually stay in hotels 00:03:24.167 --> 00:03:25.867 and pay for actual travel 00:03:25.867 --> 00:03:27.883 and that you could get reimbursements. 00:03:27.883 --> 00:03:31.419 But in fact, by actually staying with the archivist 00:03:31.419 --> 00:03:33.737 and getting access to archives and knowledge 00:03:33.740 --> 00:03:35.008 that you wouldn't have had, 00:03:35.008 --> 00:03:37.799 it probably created inroads and understanding 00:03:37.799 --> 00:03:39.201 that wouldn't have been possible 00:03:39.201 --> 00:03:41.389 if you were going through usual channels. 00:03:42.451 --> 00:03:45.400 - [Narrator] She continued to focus on economic history, 00:03:45.400 --> 00:03:46.833 exploring such questions 00:03:46.833 --> 00:03:50.701 as why the North and South had such different economic outcomes 00:03:50.701 --> 00:03:52.346 after the Civil War. 00:03:53.168 --> 00:03:56.750 - [Claudia] Then I remember thinking that there were interesting aspects 00:03:56.750 --> 00:04:01.069 in terms of child labor and families. 00:04:01.069 --> 00:04:05.950 It suddenly occurred to me, the main changes in the labor force 00:04:05.950 --> 00:04:07.539 had to do with women. 00:04:09.576 --> 00:04:10.603 - [Narrator] She realized 00:04:10.603 --> 00:04:12.666 that there was a huge story in U.S. history 00:04:12.666 --> 00:04:15.301 that was missing from economist scrutiny 00:04:15.301 --> 00:04:19.941 and that was the great evolution of women's labor force participation. 00:04:21.207 --> 00:04:23.151 - [Claudia] The women who were working -- 00:04:23.151 --> 00:04:25.650 from much of the history that I was looking at -- 00:04:25.650 --> 00:04:27.635 were young, single women. 00:04:27.635 --> 00:04:30.952 But then it morphed into studying how it was 00:04:30.952 --> 00:04:36.710 that older married women with families joined the workforce. 00:04:37.284 --> 00:04:40.238 - [Narrator] Goldin combined deep archival research, 00:04:40.238 --> 00:04:42.002 history, and economics 00:04:42.002 --> 00:04:44.085 to conduct study after study, 00:04:44.085 --> 00:04:46.017 examining how various dimensions 00:04:46.017 --> 00:04:48.568 of women's participation in the U.S. labor force 00:04:48.568 --> 00:04:50.697 evolved over 200 years. 00:04:51.517 --> 00:04:54.538 - [Ilyana] Goldin's best known for her contributions 00:04:54.538 --> 00:04:56.452 to the economics agenda. 00:04:56.452 --> 00:04:58.803 She sort of pioneers that area. 00:04:58.803 --> 00:05:02.351 - [Lawrence] She has been thinking about things no one had known -- 00:05:02.351 --> 00:05:05.417 like why is it that women's jobs 00:05:05.417 --> 00:05:08.134 were much more likely to be paid piece rate. 00:05:08.134 --> 00:05:09.934 And men's jobs -- 00:05:09.934 --> 00:05:13.057 why is money taken away and given to their parents? 00:05:13.057 --> 00:05:15.917 The important role for caring for the family 00:05:15.917 --> 00:05:18.302 and how that affects the labor market. 00:05:18.302 --> 00:05:23.069 She just has a determination to figure out what's true, 00:05:23.069 --> 00:05:26.676 to find the new data, to read the historical sources, 00:05:26.676 --> 00:05:29.701 to think about what the actual people making decisions. 00:05:29.701 --> 00:05:33.235 One of the huge advantages we have as economists, 00:05:33.235 --> 00:05:35.684 we can actually read the diaries 00:05:35.684 --> 00:05:38.016 of actual people making these decisions 00:05:38.016 --> 00:05:39.422 and talk to them and interview them 00:05:39.422 --> 00:05:41.035 when we're doing contemporaneous work 00:05:41.035 --> 00:05:43.141 or read their inner thoughts. 00:05:44.918 --> 00:05:47.818 - [Narrator] As just one example, Goldin's exhaustive research 00:05:47.818 --> 00:05:50.568 has led her to identify four phases, 00:05:50.568 --> 00:05:52.852 going back to the late 19th century, 00:05:52.852 --> 00:05:55.617 that shaped women's role in the U.S. economy. 00:05:55.617 --> 00:05:58.116 The first three phases were evolutionary. 00:05:58.692 --> 00:06:02.333 While important advances were made through the evolutionary phases, 00:06:02.333 --> 00:06:04.153 women also had limited control 00:06:04.153 --> 00:06:06.766 over key decisions affecting their employment. 00:06:07.497 --> 00:06:08.814 Women in those periods 00:06:08.814 --> 00:06:12.305 were more likely to view their working lives as intermittent 00:06:12.305 --> 00:06:14.437 and a means to put food on the table. 00:06:14.970 --> 00:06:19.143 Then came the quiet revolution, starting in the late 1970s. 00:06:19.436 --> 00:06:22.737 Women of the quiet revolution generally viewed their careers 00:06:22.737 --> 00:06:25.595 as a significant part of their personal identity 00:06:25.595 --> 00:06:28.286 and made their own decisions about their working lives. 00:06:28.286 --> 00:06:30.683 Goldin found that this latest phase 00:06:30.683 --> 00:06:34.087 was triggered mainly by increased investments in education 00:06:34.087 --> 00:06:36.862 and increased availability of contraceptives. 00:06:39.035 --> 00:06:40.884 - [Edward] More than any other person, 00:06:40.884 --> 00:06:45.836 she has been central in the study of women and work in economics. 00:06:45.836 --> 00:06:47.636 She gave it a broad historical sweep. 00:06:47.636 --> 00:06:50.383 She tied it to economic theory in a tight way. 00:06:50.383 --> 00:06:55.301 Anyone who works on the issue of women and work going forward 00:06:55.301 --> 00:06:58.702 will be citing Claudia Goldin and will be influenced by her. 00:06:58.702 --> 00:07:00.737 - [Narrator] Working together with Larry Katz, 00:07:00.737 --> 00:07:04.711 she's also done critical research about education, technology, 00:07:04.711 --> 00:07:07.852 and the extreme dangers of income and inequality. 00:07:07.852 --> 00:07:10.019 - [Ilyana] She's among the first to document 00:07:10.019 --> 00:07:13.986 what we now think of as a U shape of inequality 00:07:13.986 --> 00:07:16.435 over the 20th century. 00:07:16.435 --> 00:07:19.184 To this day, economists are still trying to figure out 00:07:19.184 --> 00:07:21.404 the determinants of that U shape. 00:07:21.404 --> 00:07:23.686 - [Narrator] As the first woman to be offered tenure 00:07:23.686 --> 00:07:25.786 in the Harvard Economics Department, 00:07:25.786 --> 00:07:27.003 she also takes her role 00:07:27.003 --> 00:07:30.486 of mentoring the next generation of economists seriously. 00:07:30.486 --> 00:07:32.370 - [Dev] As any graduate student will tell you, 00:07:32.370 --> 00:07:34.721 the advisors play a critical role. 00:07:34.721 --> 00:07:36.218 It's these personal touches 00:07:36.218 --> 00:07:39.386 that make Claudia Goldin such a wonderful advisor -- 00:07:39.386 --> 00:07:42.565 whether it's walking her dog, Pika, with her, 00:07:43.565 --> 00:07:46.904 receiving midnight texts from her that always make me laugh. 00:07:46.904 --> 00:07:49.953 - [Ilyana] She's not always serious -- which is, of course, very important 00:07:49.953 --> 00:07:51.863 because if someone's constantly serious, 00:07:51.863 --> 00:07:54.736 it's just so intimidating as a student. 00:07:55.653 --> 00:07:57.760 - [Narrator] In 2014, Goldin started 00:07:57.760 --> 00:08:00.579 the Undergraduate Women in Economics Program -- 00:08:01.102 --> 00:08:05.192 a broad initiative to encourage more female economics majors. 00:08:05.192 --> 00:08:06.717 - [Ilyana] When doing my best research, 00:08:06.717 --> 00:08:09.877 I am reminded of what I learned from Claudia, 00:08:09.877 --> 00:08:12.211 and how research can be fun 00:08:12.211 --> 00:08:14.889 how it's a mystery that you want to unravel. 00:08:15.826 --> 00:08:18.008 - [Edward] She brings a joy to her research. 00:08:18.008 --> 00:08:20.376 We were famously called the "dismal science." 00:08:20.376 --> 00:08:22.498 Well, certainly when Claudia Goldin does economics -- 00:08:22.498 --> 00:08:24.031 it's anything but dismal. 00:08:25.423 --> 00:08:27.192 - [Narrator] Want to better understand Goldin 00:08:27.192 --> 00:08:29.726 and her contributions to labor economics? 00:08:29.726 --> 00:08:32.892 Click here for related materials and practice questions, 00:08:32.892 --> 00:08:34.192 or check out other videos 00:08:34.192 --> 00:08:37.009 on how economists are tackling all sorts of issues, 00:08:37.009 --> 00:08:38.644 ranging from weighty topics, 00:08:38.644 --> 00:08:40.811 such as the Great Recession and public health, 00:08:40.811 --> 00:08:42.825 to everyday topics, like wine -- 00:08:42.825 --> 00:08:44.377 yes, even wine!