Claudia Goldin ’67 wins Nobel Prize in Economics

Read the full story by Blaine Friedlander in the Cornell Chronicle.

Claudia Goldin ’67, who dreamt of becoming an archaeologist or a microbiologist until she took an economics course at Cornell, won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics for her study of women’s progress in the workforce.

Goldin’s pioneering research has revealed the reasons for gender gaps in labor force participation and earnings. She is the third woman to win the economics Nobel, and the first to win it individually rather than sharing the prize. She is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

“Her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. “Women are vastly underrepresented in the global labor market and, when they work, they earn less than men. Claudia Goldin has trawled the archives and collected over 200 years of data from the U.S., allowing her to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time.”