Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin’s takeaways from her research on women and work

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• John Yang:

  At a time-honored ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden tomorrow, the King of Sweden is to hand medals to this year's Nobel laureates. Among them will be Claudia Goldin, recipient of the prize in economics for her research on women in the American workforce. She's only the third woman to get that honor and the first to win it solo, not sharing it with anybody else.

  Economics correspondent Paul Solman spoke with her about her trailblazing work.

• Paul Solman:

  Where did you grow up?

• Claudia Goldin, Nobel Prize Winner:

  The Bronx, New York City.

• Paul Solman:

  Were you at all interested in economics? You went to the Bronx High School of Science, right?

• Claudia Goldin:

  I didn't know what economics was. Most high school students don't know what economics is. That's good. That's fine. There are many things that you should learn when you're more mature.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  Goldin's Nobel Prize is for her work on the economics of women. And in particular, the increasing role of women in the workplace.

• Man:

  It happened that a woman's delicate touch, enabled her even to excel men in certain precision operations.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  One against the grain finding that Rosie the Riveter was not a main driver, Goldin post a question.

• Claudia Goldin:

  You know, if World War II had not existed, what would labor force participation of women have been in 1950? It probably would have been a little bit lower, but not much. The treatment effect of the war was probably felt most by the more educated women who had had the clerical jobs during World War II, not the ones who like Rosie would have been in the factories.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  The most accurate image of Rosie, says Goldin, is Norman Rockwell's, a temporary wartime factory worker whose job was to crush Hitler underfoot. Not the now more famous image, but that's the one that's become so popular.

• Claudia Goldin:

  That's right, because she's cute.

• Paul Solman:

  She's tough.

• Claudia Goldin:

  But she's also very pretty. She was like 17, 18 years old. Norman Rockwell Rosie is the real Rosie.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  A Rosie who often returned to housework when the soldiers can came home from the war reclaiming the factory work. But other women kept joining the workforce. One reason: the birth control pill, Goldin says. Easier access to the pill in the 1970s helped more women pursue life outside the home.

• Claudia Goldin:

  It gave to women who were graduating from college the ability to have more time to form their careers, either in the workplace, or by going to professional or graduate school. It led to, causally led to an increase in the age at first marriage. And that meant that one could concentrate more on careers, and do and have the family later.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  Which leads to today, with more than 77 percent of women in the workforce, up from 28 percent in 1940. And yet, the gender wage gap hasn't closed all that much. Women earn 82 cents for every man's dollar. Some 20 years ago, they earned 80 cents on the dollar.

• Claudia Goldin:

  When men and women begin their lives as workers, they earn similar amounts. And as their lives progress, these differences widen. I mean, that's a fact. And then the question is, how do we explain it?

• Paul Solman:

  And what did you find?

• Claudia Goldin:

  Much of this occurs around the time of the birth of a child. That explains a large part of the widening gap between men and women, as men and women get older. What women, particularly those who are mothers, lose relative to men who are fathers is not fully made up. And if anything, men who are fathers we see seem to have something that we call the paternal premium.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  Mom and dad are equally educated, equally able, working what Goldin calls greedy jobs, 100-hour weeks and sky-high pay. But then —

• Claudia Goldin:

  They just had a child, they want a second one. And they realize this is untenable, that someone has to be the on-call, at-home parent.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  So mom stays home, dad stays in the pressure cooker, but fathers not only work more hours and thus make more money than mothers, they also make more than single men.

• Paul Solman:

  Why?

• Claudia Goldin:

  There are several possibilities. But the one that seems most believable is they somehow internally decide that they should rev up their energies to earn more, provide for the growing group of children.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  That was the story until the pandemic, which may now cause the pay gap to narrow.

• Claudia Goldin:

  About 30 percent of days worked are now at home, are now remote. Greedy jobs have gotten more flexible, and flexible jobs have gotten more productive. We have learned to work better. We have learned too, that working remotely can be done productively.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  Which means women are more able to do greedy jobs too. Moreover —

• Paul Solman:

  Women are getting more graduate and even post-graduate degrees and that difference is increasing. Right? We still need to worry about a gender gap.

• Claudia Goldin:

  In differences in earnings at the upper end of the education and occupation distribution, the gender gap is much, much larger than for individuals who have less education whose jobs are not in the professional category. So it's enormously high.

• Paul Solman:

  Grade something that said five years from now, women will be getting double the number of college degrees as men. So, won't that mean that women are taking more and more high positions in the economy, even though women might still be expected to take care of the kids more than men are?

• Claudia Goldin:

  We would have to see, first of all, who's marrying whom and what degrees they have and what jobs they're going into. But to the extent that higher education means that the more doors are open to you. Yeah, that certainly could narrow the gap.

• Paul Solman:

  I had one last question. What's your reaction to getting the Nobel Prize in economics?

• Claudia Goldin:

  It has not yet sunk in. Other than the fact that I got 1,600 emails in 36 hours that I had to go through and it caused a certain amount of eyestrain. I am delighted and I — the 1,600 emails included hundreds and hundreds of emails that said I cried, I want to hug you. And I have the sense that this isn't just my Nobel. It's a Nobel for women in general and for that I am very pleased.

• Paul Solman (voice-over):

  As are many of us. For PBS News Weekend, Paul Solman.