On the evening of October 9, Beijing time, the winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics was announced. Claudia Goldin, professor of economics at Harvard University, received the award for her research on advancing the understanding of women's labor market outcomes. She reveals the main drivers of the gender gap in the Labour market.
Goldin provides the first comprehensive overview of women's earnings and labor-market participation over the centuries. Her research reveals the reasons for these changes and the main root causes of the gender gap that still exists in the labor market.
Women are grossly underrepresented in the global labor market, and when women do work, they earn less than men. Goldin has gathered more than 200 years of archival data from the United States to show how and why gender differences in income and employment have changed over time.
Goldin shows that over the course of more than 200 years, the trend of women's participation in the labor market has not risen, but has formed a U-shaped curve. The labor market participation rate of married women declined in the early 19th century with the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society, but began to rise in the early 20th century with the development of the service industry. According to Goldin, this pattern is the result of structural changes and evolving social norms about women's responsibilities at home.
During the 20th century, women's education levels continued to improve, and in most high-income countries, this level is now significantly higher than that of men. Golding demonstrates that access to the pill played a major role in accelerating this revolutionary change by providing new opportunities for career planning.
Despite modernisation, economic growth and a rise in the proportion of women in employment during the twentieth century, the pay gap between men and women has barely narrowed for a long time. Part of the explanation, according to Goldin, is that educational decisions that affect lifetime career opportunities are made at a relatively young age.
Historically, the gender gap in earnings has been largely explained by differences in education and career choices. However, Goldin has shown that much of this difference in earnings now occurs between women in the same occupation, and occurs primarily at the birth of the first child.
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How do you view the research results of this award?
Pan Helin, co-director and researcher of the Research Center for Digital Economy and Financial Innovation at Zhejiang University International Union Business School, said that Professor Goldin is mainly engaged in research on labor economics and economic history, and pays most attention to the analysis of women and gender pay gaps. The Nobel Prize was awarded to her for her research on the market theory of women's labor economy. The gender pay gap for women has long been an important aspect of development economics, sometimes subverting our conventional wisdom. For example, whether education will bring about equity, whether it will bring about an increase in the economic rewards of labor. After Professor Goldin's award, China has also aroused a lot of attention to women in the platform economy, family and labor remuneration, which is also an important field of economic research. On the whole, this award is relatively unexpected.
Some of Professor Goldin's views are also questionable, such as her remark that it is impossible to solve the problem of an aging society by increasing the fertility rate of women, which may be more realistic in the context of the United States, but is not practical for China and more developing countries. For example, our country's open two-child and three-child policy is appropriate. The economist pays more attention to China and highly recognizes the achievements of women's equal rights in China. For example, there are many rich women in China, which is an important sign of women's participation in the labor market. She believes that China has done very well in this regard, and it is also an important factor in China's economic development. In terms of labor economy, our country has indeed taken some correct measures, such as liberating male and female labor force. In today's society, we have become accustomed to seeing more women involved in employment and entrepreneurship, achieving high achievements. Compared with other countries, our country has achieved a very high level of female participation in the labor market. Therefore, Professor Goldin gave a high evaluation of our country's performance in this field. In the future, our country will continue to liberate the productive forces through various ways, eliminate injustice in employment, give full play to the ingenuity of every Chinese person, and make the job market more prosperous.
Are there any rules in the selection of Nobel Prizes in recent years?
Predicting and explaining how the Nobel Prize in economics is awarded is a challenging task because of the broad scope of economics. One can even find a phenomenon: some economic theories were thought to be correct when they were proposed and awarded the Nobel Prize, but over time they are replaced by new economic theories. This suggests that many economic theories have not been systematically tested. But in recent years, the Nobel Prize in economics seems to show a certain pattern. In the past, researchers in the field of macroeconomics won more Nobel prizes, but in recent years, microeconomic theory researchers have received more and more attention. This year's Nobel Prize in Economics focuses on the economics of women's work, a field that covers a wide range of subjects. These include the impact of platform economy on women's employment, as well as issues such as the double harvest of family and career in the Chinese context, which are the categories of women's economics. It can be seen that the Nobel Economics Prize pays more and more attention to the study of practical theoretical problems at the micro level. The 2022 Nobel Prize studied why banks were bailed out in an economic crisis; The 2021 study focuses on the impact of education migration on local employment pay; The 2020 study explores how to conduct an effective auction strategy. Through these award themes, we can see that the Nobel Prize in Economics is increasingly focused on solving practical problems in real life.
Pan pointed out that while the research topic of the Nobel Prize in Economics is closely related to practical problems in real life, it does not directly involve policy decisions or think tank research. Instead, it looks more at these issues from a theoretical perspective. These issues have been more or less relevant to our economic life over the past few years, reflecting a trend.