This year’s economic sciences laureate Claudia Goldin showed that female participation in the labour market did not have an upward trend over a 200 year period, but instead forms a U-shaped curve.
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 9, 2023
The participation of married women decreased with the transition from an agrarian… pic.twitter.com/PFVNNy5NOw
October 9, 2023
The Nobel Prize in Economics.
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44 comments:
Wait...on that cool diagram of the female workforce over time, which little figure represents the stewardesses? They're my favorite.
She got a Nobel for that?
They give a Nobel in econ for something I could've scratched out on a napkin? Hunh.
It seems to me "married women" would likely correlate to "women with children". Those children needed to be cared for. The woman in the agrarian society would be in the same place as the children (and the children likely helped on the farm, too). When industry came along, someone had to be away from the home to work, and the children still needed to be raised.
I'm not sure what is revealed that wasn't know long before. When a man can't earn enough to support a family, the wife has to work. Perhaps I'm wrong but even today American farms are operated by husband and wife. For almost all of history that was the case. The low point was the period when a man could support a family on a single paycheck. The curve up simply reflects the economic reality that single incomes are no longer possible for most couples with children and with divorce so prevalent single woman have no choice but to work and the same holds true for the never married woman with or without kids. If the Left wasn't so hostile to the blue collar workforce and instead embraced economic growth this may once again allow woman to have a choice.
Kind of shoots the shit out of the feminist argument men have always suppressed women's choice to work (have a career) or not, don't it?
Hmm. It'd be interesting to match it up with a graph showing the replacement rate of humans over that same period. Also- the rise in percentages of criminal activity in the greater society, and the rise (or fall) of the female life expectancy during these same periods.
That's a surprise. Usually women are no good at economics.
That's what wins a Nobel Prize?
I once posited that if you don't use your light bulbs they will last longer and save you money.
I will start clearing space on my mantle...
I'm confident that there is more to her work than a simple restating of obvious truths.
No, really. There's probably calculus. And boolean statistics.
The "replies" over there are on the thin side.
One reply caught my attention: "Is this “friends chatting in a café” kind of insight worth it of a Nobel prize?"
INTERESTING
Female workforce participation generally follows economic needs. Worldwide. Across history. Females always have two major time-filling paths: reproduction or economic production. Reproduction costs resources while production generates resources. The logic is simple, these needs are simple to understand, and female biological reproductive programming extends beyond humans and mammals to many, many species with two sexes.
Where's my prize?
"That's a surprise. Usually women are no good at economics."
It's a good day when I hear a Norm joke.
If any of the snarky commenters are sincerely interested and the large and innovative body of work by Prof. Goldin, read the Nobel Prize announcement. https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/advanced-economicsciencesprize2023.pdf
Uhhh…
So what?
Pew Research showed not long ago that the number of 40-yr-olds never married started declining from 16% in 1910 to a nadir of 6% in 1980. It's increased steeply since passing 16% in 2000 and 25% in 2022.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/28/a-record-high-share-of-40-year-olds-in-the-us-have-never-been-married/
I wonder how that tracks with this.
Big Mike:"She got a Nobel for that?"
It was either her or they were going to have to give it to the Big Guy for Bidenomics.
That's interesting as far as it goes.
The essential problem is we went from women are home, which is beneficial to birth rates, to women are in the office, which is not. A country that cannot replace its population is doomed.
Why do I think that dip doesn't represent ladies lounging about on recliners, telling the gardner to trim an exotic planting just a bit more on the front side? I suspect the lives of women as laborers has been pretty constant over time, with their work changing with the times. Define work as what women actually labor doing and forget participation in the labor force. But of course noncompensated and untaxed labor doesn't count, right?
Claudia Goldin = Anne Elk
That one is a ‘sort of’ Nobel…
Now map the correlation between women participating in taxable vocations versus dysfunctional social progress, normalizing the wicked solution, etc.
Wait- I didn’t get my snark in: Why do women feel obligated to focus only on ‘women’s issues’? It’s glaring. I got so sick of listening to VC pitches from women that always began women are under served/represented inX - good god! Sometimes it feels like there was Marie Curie and then, what…Elizabeth Holmes?
Is this some kind of workism joke?
Part of the issue with the U is that census takers didn’t count farm wives as part of the labor force. In 1900 about 40% of the US economy was agriculture, and a similar portion of the population lived on farms. Yet the record shows only about 10% of women in the labor force.
Checked my own family census records from 1950 – both sets of grandparents and two sets of aunts and uncles. One grandfather was retired while the other three men were listed as farmers and part of the labor force. None of the four women were counted as part of the labor force. So in large part we have a measurement problem. Goldin has pointed this out in her research.
@H -- thx. I read the first quarter of the pdf and found nothing beyond what our commenters have said. If a Nobel prize allows everyone to celebrate common sense, well, good.
Also, I'm seeing a very narrow definition of women's labor. She measures documented work in an external company. It's a diminishing and provincial way of looking at women.
If the rest of the pdf goes beyond that, my apologies. My attention span couldn't read any further.
"If any of the snarky commenters are sincerely interested and the large and innovative body of work by Prof. Goldin,"
I took her dare.
The remainder of this document is organized as follows. Section 2 presents Goldin’s seminal contributions to measuring female labor force participation and wage rates over the past 250 years. We highlight her novel data work and the new stylized facts that emerged regarding the evolution of gender inequality in the US labor market. Section 3 emphasizes Goldin’s contributions to explaining the development of gender gaps and why they persist today – especially in earnings. Section 4 briefly discusses the relationship between the long-run time series evolution of gender gaps in the US and the gender gaps that exist across countries at different stages of economic development, as well as the core role played by education. Section 5 considers implications of Goldin’s historical work for contemporary policy debates. Section 6 concludes.
Since I didn't know what "stylized facts" were, I asked ChatGPT, it turns out that it means that in the world of gender economics, her "facts" are accepted as true. Not to worry though, this is not in any way to imply any kind of groupthink is going on.
Every wealthy modern society has dropped below replacement fertility. This includes Japan, where it is still overwhelmingly the rule that women leave their office jobs after getting married.
Every year, on the occasion of the assignment of this prize, we have the pleasure of reading the ritual bashing of economics for its poor intellectual rigor by people who mainly center their lives on this much vituperated subject, most likely studied it, at least at some point, and live by it, for it or with it. And yes, I realize this is a blog and not the Financial Times.
IMO — seems very relevant with the rise of remote working. I'm surprised no one has mentioned the obvious conclusion from this research — that instead of quotas and diversity training, what is really needed is prodding companies through incentives and regulation to allow and encourage more employees (female or otherwise) to work from home.
As others have noted, even at the bottom of the U-shaped curve displayed I doubt that was because women by and large were sitting around like dilettantes, reading the occasional book, perhaps painting the occasional watercolor, or just contemplating their navel. I haven't seen one in a while, but 20 or 30 years ago it used to be a common bit, perhaps once or twice a year, where the news would run a piece where economists calculated what you would have to pay in an annual salary for the work done by, "Mom". Even back then I remember that usually being around $120k to $140k a year.
Doesn't Paul Krugman have a Nobel in economics as well?? He's ALWAYS wrong.
Wasn't this lady the one that did that AMAZING report about blind auditions for Orchestras?
The one that was Completely full of sh*t?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/blind-spots-in-the-blind-audition-study-11571599303?mod=article_inline
Arnold Kling's opinion FWIW
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/the-latest-economics-nobel-prize?utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2
The Vault Dweller said...
I haven't seen one in a while, but 20 or 30 years ago it used to be a common bit, perhaps once or twice a year, where the news would run a piece where economists calculated what you would have to pay in an annual salary for the work done by, "Mom". Even back then I remember that usually being around $120k to $140k a year.
Besides the over-calculation, that's because it kept being pointed out that they never seem to calculate all the work "Dad" does around and for the home.
3:15 wins
"Besides the over-calculation..."
From "How Much Is a Stay-at-Home Parent Worth?"
According to 2019 data from Salary.com, if you are a stay-at-home parent and paid for your services, you would be looking at a median annual salary of $178,201.
Is there anyone who thinks that amount is reasonable?
what is really needed is prodding companies through incentives and regulation to allow and encourage more employees (female or otherwise) to work from home.
I doubt that much in the line of incentives and regulation is needed, if companies' recent experience of being unable to mandate that employees work in the office proved to be a successful model for those companies' type of work.
My husband's office now requires 3 days a week in-office, which days to be decided on within groups, to facilitate collaboration and maintain organizational culture - it's a foundation that is disallowed from fundraising by charter, so all it "produces" are grants*. Other organizations' work-at-home success may vary.
We know a couple who have both been working 99% from home for as long as we've known them - more than 20 years now. They work in different industries, too.
My son, a banker, is also on a 3-day office schedule.
Technology has helped a lot to mitigate the bad effects of not being in the office, but as I've said here before, I do worry about entry-level people's exposure (or lack thereof) to the serendipitous mentoring and forwarding opportunities that arise from bumping into someone.
*This is a great example of my grammatical quandary of several weeks ago! This sentence is properly "all it produces are grants" but it could be reworded, "the only thing it produces is grants." The first hits my ear better.
For the quantity and quality of work(effort and deliverables) of my wife homeschooling 5 children to have graduate school level writing ability before highschool... The $100K+ price tag is a bit low... And we are at 133% of the federal poverty level... Retirement is either the kids' success or a hole in the ground... I would have to hire 4 people to do what she accomplishes - 3 to do the work and one to mangage quality control.
Alfred Nobel established five Nobel prizes.
Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine.
There is no Nobel Prize for economics.
What she won was the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
It's a prize sponsored by the state bank.
That's like winning the Federal Reserve Bank Prize in Memory of Alan Greenspan.
madAsHell said...
"Doesn't Paul Krugman have a Nobel in economics as well? He's ALWAYS wrong."
I don't remember the details, but Krugman's Nobel was legitimately earned; it centered around a subtle insight that sounds counter-intuitive at first. And he has authored many economic textbooks, many with his wife who is also an economist.
But Bush Jr broke him.
When James Taranto was sending out the daily Best of the Web for the Wall Street Journal, one of his regular bits was "Krugman vs Krugman" where Taranto would show that Krugman's latest blather (and Democrat talking point) in his NYT column was contradicted by economic textbooks written by Paul Krugman.
Tim @ 4:58: You deserve the thanks of a grateful nation --or at least of its elite, gathered here at Althouse Blog-- for wading through what sounds like a horrible piece of Wokery and deconstructing it for us.
Based only on your précis, it sounds as if Goldin's work can be fairly described as, "To a child with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Definitely worth a Nobel!
Jamie @ 7:09: Anybody who uses "quandary" gets a +1. Also this:
(1) "...Technology has helped a lot to mitigate the bad effects of not being in the office, but as I've said here before, I do worry about entry-level people's exposure (or lack thereof) to the serendipitous mentoring and forwarding opportunities that arise from bumping into someone."
Bingo. Face time cannot be fully digitized. We are social creatures and we seek social rewards and guidance. We learn much by example, with direct, sustained, even intimate, observation; and a Zoom call every Wednesday is not, can never be, the same as hanging out with the team all day long.
(2) "...*This is a great example of my grammatical quandary of several weeks ago! This sentence is properly 'all it produces are grants' but it could be reworded, 'the only thing it produces is grants.' The first hits my ear better."
You have bravely faced a deep problem with our language, and your solution is, IMHO, the more euphonius.
ThatsGoingToLeaveA said...
I would have to hire 4 people to do what she accomplishes - 3 to do the work and one to mangage quality control.
Oh, please. I was a single parent for 15 years.
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