Claudia Goldin | Women in Economics

This episode of Women in Economics profiles Claudia Goldin, pioneering economic historian, labor economist, and first female economist to be offered tenure at Harvard.

She was drawn to the sciences at a young age but switched to focusing on economics after taking an economics class with Alfred Kahn at Cornell as an undergrad.

Her most well-known research covers the evolution of women’s labor force participation, but her expertise is by no means confined to this topic. She’s also researched extensively on the economics of education, inequality, and automation.

Learn more about Claudia Goldin: https://mru.io/quf

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- [Claudia] When you do
economic research,

you have three pieces.

I think of them as balls

that I want floating up
all the time.

I'm juggling them,

and one of them is the idea.

I have to begin with
"What's the question,

what's important?"

♪ [music] ♪

- [Narrator] Economists --

not a group with a lot
of Marys, Natashas, or Juanitas,

and that's caused
a lot of controversy.

However, what's often overlooked
are the actual female economists

who are pushing economics forward
by addressing real-world issues.

Welcome to Women in Economics.

- [Ilyana] One thing I definitely
learned from Claudia

is to approach economic
research like a detective.

I think, especially, when working
in economic history,

when you can't just download
a cleaned-up dataset,

you really have to go searching
open, dusty boxes

and look under rocks.

- [Lawrence] She is the consummate,
economic historian.

She has been
the innovator and pioneer

on bringing economic logic,
and historical and better data,

to understanding
women's role in the economy.

And then she is a fantastic
labor economist,

who had been a leader in work
on understanding inequality.

- [Narrator] Claudia Dale Goldin
was born in 1946 in the Bronx.

She was a problem-solver
from the beginning.

As a child, she avoided
the New York City heat

by spending her summer days
playing cards or reading

in air-conditioned
department stores.

And while she always knew

she wanted to be
a scientist of some kind,

she wasn't always set on economics.

- [Dev] She'll tell stories to me

about when she first went
to the Natural History Museum,

when she was living in the Bronx,

and fell in love with mummies

and thought that archeology
was going to be her passion.

But then she discovered
microbiology,

and she suddenly realized
that microscopes uncovered

a whole new world
of discovery for her.

It wasn't until she actually went
to college at Cornell

that she first got introduced
to economics.

- [Claudia] I decided
to become an economist

because I took an economics class

from an amazing person
named Fred Kahn.

He was so excited about the field
of industrial organization

and product markets and regulation

that it was infectious.

And in fact, when I went
to graduate school

at the University of Chicago,

I went there to study
Industrial Organization.

- [Narrator] Under
the mentorship of Bob Fogel,

Claudia studied
American Economic History,

particularly the economics of slavery
and the post-Civil War South.

She had to travel
to some southern states

to gather archival materials
for this research.

Goldin didn't approach this trip
like a traditional economist.

- [Lawrence] She thought
what I should do

is hitchhike between
the different cities in the south.

She met somebody
from one of the archives

who let her stay at their place,

and when she came back,

her advisor asked her for a list
of the receipts and expenses

associated with the trip,

and she had no clue

that you were supposed
to actually stay in hotels

and pay for actual travel

and that you could
get reimbursements.

But in fact, by actually staying
with the archivist

and getting access
to archives and knowledge

that you wouldn't have had,

it probably created inroads
and understanding

that wouldn't have been possible

if you were going through
usual channels.

- [Narrator] She continued
to focus on economic history,

exploring such questions

as why the North and South
had such different economic outcomes

after the Civil War.

- [Claudia] Then I remember thinking
that there were interesting aspects

in terms of child labor
and families.

It suddenly occurred to me,
the main changes in the labor force

had to do with women.

- [Narrator] She realized

that there was
a huge story in U.S. history

that was missing
from economist scrutiny

and that was the great evolution
of women's labor force participation.

- [Claudia] The women
who were working --

from much of the history
that I was looking at --

were young, single women.

But then it morphed
into studying how it was

that older married women
with families joined the workforce.

- [Narrator] Goldin combined
deep archival research,

history, and economics

to conduct study after study,

examining how various dimensions

of women's participation
in the U.S. labor force

evolved over 200 years.

- [Ilyana] Goldin's best known
for her contributions

to the economics agenda.

She sort of pioneers that area.

- [Lawrence] She has been thinking
about things no one had known --

like why is it that women's jobs

were much more likely
to be paid piece rate.

And men's jobs --

why is money taken away
and given to their parents?

The important role
for caring for the family

and how that affects
the labor market.

She just has a determination
to figure out what's true,

to find the new data,
to read the historical sources,

to think about what
the actual people making decisions.

One of the huge advantages
we have as economists,

we can actually read the diaries

of actual people
making these decisions

and talk to them and interview them

when we're doing
contemporaneous work

or read their inner thoughts.

- [Narrator] As just one example,
Goldin's exhaustive research

has led her
to identify four phases,

going back to the late 19th century,

that shaped women's role
in the U.S. economy.

The first three phases
were evolutionary.

While important advances were made
through the evolutionary phases,

women also had limited control

over key decisions
affecting their employment.

Women in those periods

were more likely to view
their working lives as intermittent

and a means to put food
on the table.

Then came the quiet revolution,
starting in the late 1970s.

Women of the quiet revolution
generally viewed their careers

as a significant part
of their personal identity

and made their own decisions
about their working lives.

Goldin found that this latest phase

was triggered mainly by
increased investments in education

and increased availability
of contraceptives.

- [Edward] More than
any other person,

she has been central in the study
of women and work in economics.

She gave it a broad
historical sweep.

She tied it to economic theory
in a tight way.

Anyone who works on the issue
of women and work going forward

will be citing Claudia Goldin
and will be influenced by her.

- [Narrator] Working together
with Larry Katz,

she's also done critical research
about education, technology,

and the extreme dangers
of income and inequality.

- [Ilyana] She's among
the first to document

what we now think of
as a U shape of inequality

over the 20th century.

To this day, economists
are still trying to figure out

the determinants of that U shape.

- [Narrator] As the first woman
to be offered tenure

in the Harvard Economics Department,

she also takes her role

of mentoring the next generation
of economists seriously.

- [Dev] As any graduate
student will tell you,

the advisors play a critical role.

It's these personal touches

that make Claudia Goldin
such a wonderful advisor --

whether it's walking
her dog, Pika, with her,

receiving midnight texts from her
that always make me laugh.

- [Ilyana] She's not always serious --
which is, of course, very important

because if someone's
constantly serious,

it's just so intimidating
as a student.

- [Narrator] In 2014,
Goldin started

the Undergraduate Women
in Economics Program --

a broad initiative to encourage
more female economics majors.

- [Ilyana] When doing
my best research,

I am reminded of
what I learned from Claudia,

and how research can be fun

how it's a mystery
that you want to unravel.

- [Edward] She brings a joy
to her research.

We were famously called
the "dismal science."

Well, certainly when
Claudia Goldin does economics --

it's anything but dismal.

- [Narrator] Want to better
understand Goldin

and her contributions
to labor economics?

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