2023-10-15 04:15:00
The Bank of Sweden Prize in memory of Alfred Nobel (the so-called Nobel Prize in Economics) has been awarded to Claudia Goldin, a professor at Harvard University, for “having improved our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes.” In this article I will focus on her main area of research: her view of women’s participation in the US labor market.
The beginnings
As a child, Goldin dreamed of being, first, an archaeologist and, later, a microbiologist, a career she began at Cornell University. There she discovered that “the knowledge was deeper and broader than she had come to think at Bronx Sciences” (her high school). At that moment she forgot about the microscope and went “into the libraries and the dusty archives, where I have remained ever since.” She ended up studying History at Cornell and, because of a professor, Alfred Kahn, she became interested in economics. She later did her doctorate in Chicago, by “almost pure luck.” There were “the great minds” (including those of future Nobel Prize winners Friedman, Stigler, Becker, Fogel and Coase). He came across Industrial Organization and Labor Economics, “but its methodology and questions seemed too narrow to me, and in the end I returned to the study of History”, in which his mentor was the aforementioned Fogel, one of the founders of the ” new economic history”.
When she began the research included in her main work (“Understanding the Gender Gap; An Economic History of American Women,” published in 1990), Goldin began working within the established framework regarding the supply of female labor, led by Jacob Mincer. and Gary Becker. “However, the framework had to adjust to historical reality. So we economists still didn’t know how to incorporate changing norms, and I was studying a topic in which norms played a major role. As I was writing the book I began to ‘ question authority’ much more,” he would recall. From there comes his broad vision, economic and non-economic, of the topics he studies and hence, when he begins an investigation, he begins with several books on the subject, often history, sometimes sociology, on other occasions fiction, rarely of Economy.
The hidden side of the curve
Economists enjoy explaining curves and, consequently, we ask ourselves questions like the following: if we draw a graph in which the horizontal axis shows the passage of time (and, therefore, the increase in the standard of living, per capita income) and on the vertical axis the percentage of married women who work, what form will that relationship take? The answer that first comes to mind is that, as the standard of living increases (we move, therefore, from the origin to the right on the horizontal axis) the percentage of married women who work increases because, in general, Women enter the labor market when per capita income increases. In other words, according to this approach, the curve is rising. Well, the first thing Claudia Goldin told us is that this was only true in part of the story and that, consequently, we had forgotten the hidden side of said curve. To reach this result she had to work with long series (more than a hundred years) and, as a consequence, she discovered that what there really was was a “U”-shaped evolution. That is, the percentage of married women who worked went, first, from high to low and, second, from low to high, thus drawing a “U.”
The phases
In a lecture given in 2006 (“The silent revolution that transformed women’s employment, training and family”), Goldin established four phases in the history of the topic at hand. The first three are characterized by “evolution” and the last, by “revolution.” In this case, these terms have a very concrete meaning for her: “The transition from evolution to revolution was a change from static decision-making, with limited and intermittent horizons, to dynamic decision-making, with long horizons.” It was a shift from agents who work because they and their families ‘need money’ to those who, at least in part, work because occupation and employment define one’s identity… It represents a shift from ‘jobs’ to ‘jobs’. careers’, in which the difference between these two concepts is related to both the horizon and human capital”. In the phases related to evolution, women forge their identity after marriage, while in the revolution phase their identity is forged before.
The transition from one phase to another is caused by exogenous changes, and Claudia Goldin always carries out the analysis on the basis of supply and demand, and using the “income” and “substitution” effects typical of economic science.
Phase I, from the end of the 19th century to the 1920s, is that of a few “independent female workers”, a group basically made up of young, unmarried women with a low level of education, who did not learn much at work (for example, manual laborers). industrial piecework or laundresses) and that they could not improve it much with better training. In this phase, “the jobs were usually dirty, dangerous, repetitive, many hours per day and many days per week.”
Day phase II It goes from 1930 to the 1950s, and is a phase in which the legal and social limitations that existed regarding work for married women were relaxed. Two important exogenous factors in this phase were the growing demand for administrative work and the increase in training. Both led to, “before marriage, young women entering into more pleasant, cleaner jobs with fewer hours.” Another exogenous factor that reinforced the change was the rapid diffusion of household technologies based on electricity, such as the washing machine and the refrigerator.
Day phase III It goes from the 50s to the 70s, and is where the foundations of the revolution were laid. In this phase, an increasing acceptance of married women’s work takes place. Women’s human capital continued to increase, and this investment was consistent with their expectations. The problem was that their expectations were not correct, so the result ended up being negative. That is, the daughters believed something that was later seen to be false: that their jobs were going to be like their mothers’ (brief and intermittent) and, consequently, they did not reorient their training towards what was most beneficial to them.
Phase IV It goes from the late 70s to the “present” (article published in 2006), and is the phase of the “revolution”, in which three key aspects change.
On the one hand, horizons expanded. That is, “women anticipated their future working lives more accurately,” so they could prepare better and opt for “careers” instead of “jobs.” They thus entered a virtuous circle: “Young women broadened their horizons and perceived that their lives were going to be different from those of their elders. This revised expectation of future employment led, in turn, young women to continue studying and graduate.” .
On the other hand, identities were modified. There was a “fundamental transformation” in the way women viewed their work: “The majority perceived their work as a fundamental aspect of their satisfaction in life and saw their workplace as an integral part of their social world.” .
Finally, as a consequence of broadening horizons and changing identities, women could (were more prepared) and wanted to (have careers). The result was that, in relative terms, compared to men, they began to earn more (the percentage of women’s earnings compared to men’s was stagnant at around 60% and began to rise) and they changed their occupation: From those that were traditional at the time (for example, nurse or teacher) they changed to others such as doctor or teacher. In this entire process, a fundamental exogenous factor was the contraceptive pill: “As the pill spread among young people, the unmarried population, a powerful reason for marriage disappeared… As the age of first marriage increased, women could be more responsible… and form their identities before marriage and family.
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