| 1 | Name: | Dr. Claudia Goldin | |
| Institution: | Harvard University | ||
| Year Elected: | 2015 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 302. Economics | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1946 | ||
Claudia Goldin has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of labor market discrimination, gender roles in employment, the roles of education and health as major components of human capital and the role of human capital in economic growth. She has argued that it is difficult to rationalize occupational sex segregation and wage discrimination in terms of men’s taste for distance from women; instead she constructs a “pollution” model of discrimination in which a new female hire may reduce the prestige of a previously all male occupation. According to the model, occupations requiring productivity above the female median will tend to be segregated, while those below the median will tend to be integrated. In her analysis of the economic slowdown in the U.S. in the 1970s she finds that rising levels of inequality at the end of the 20th century was the root of the problem, not slow productivity growth or economic convergence between nations. In the U.S. educational system, she finds that the virtues characterizing it in the early 20th century may now be considered vices, in that the system that created social mobility now is beset by a lack of standards. In all her work she has illuminated fundamental questions of economic and social development. She won the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics "for her groundbreaking insights into the history of the American economy, the evolution of gender roles and the interplay of technology, human capital and labor markets" in 2020. | |||