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Claudia Goldin was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in economics for her work creating “the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labor market participation through the centuries," The Washington Post, The New York Times, Fortune and other publications reported. A 77-year-old professor of economics at Harvard University, she is the third woman to win the award and the first to win it solo.

In its announcement of the award, the Royal Swedish Academy of the Science, stated, "By trawling through the archives and compiling and correcting historical data, Goldin has been able to present new and often surprising facts. The fact that women’s choices have often been, and remain, limited by marriage and responsibility for the home and family is at the heart of her analyses and explanatory models. Her insights reach far outside the borders of the US and similar patterns have been observed in many other countries. Her research brings us a better understanding of the labour markets of yesterday, today and tomorrow."

The Post reported that Goldin's research challenged prevailing ideas that good economic conditions and technological developments alone could bring more women into the workforce. She found that almost 60 percent of married women were in the workforce in the 1790s, when much of the U.S. country was centered on farming. But with the rise of industrialization in the 1800s, women's participation in the workforce decreased significantly, as they found it difficult to balance outside work with responsibilities at home. Then, in the early 1900s, she found, women began returning to the workforce due to greater educational opportunities and a shift to service-sector work. But a lack of accessible child care remained a sizable hurdle. One of her principal finding was that access to the birth-control pill in the 1960s played an important role in increasing college enrollment of women.

Goldin also investigated the causes of persistent pay gaps between men and women, including discrimination and motherhood. While much of the pay gap in the past could be attributed to women attaining different educational levels and choosing different careers than men, Goldin found that the wage gap also existed between men and women in the same jobs. She found that many women would often start earning less after the birth of their first child as they had to reduce their work hours because they were usually the primary caregivers for their children.

Goldin's curriculum vitae indicates that she received a B.A. in economics from Cornell in 1967, and a master's degree and doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1969 and 1972, respectively. In 1989, she became the first women to be offered tenure in Harvard's economics department, the Times reported.

“We’re never going to have gender equality until we also have couple equity,” she said in an interview with the Times. While there has been “monumental progressive change, at the same time there are important differences” which often result in women working more in the home.

The Post reported that Goldin was asleep at her Cambridge, Mass., home when the Nobel Committee called early Monday morning to notify her of the prize. She will receive a 11 million-krona ($1 million) award.