The Economic History Podcast Career and Family
Dec 22, 2025
Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist and 2023 Nobel Prize winner, delves into her groundbreaking work on women’s labor market outcomes. She details the career-family balance of five cohorts of university-educated women across the 20th century. Topics include the historical marriage bars affecting women's careers and the evolving role of motherhood in professional life. Goldin also highlights market responses, like subsidized childcare, that could bridge the persistent gender gap in the workforce, making for a compelling discussion.
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From Punch Cards To OCRed Censuses
- Goldin recalls manually copying data and making IBM punch cards in the 1970s–80s to build historical datasets.
- She contrasts that with modern OCR and large digitized censuses that now enable far richer research.
Five Cohorts Explain Changing Women’s Paths
- College-educated women shifted across five distinct career-family regimes over the 20th century.
- These regimes explain large changes in marriage, motherhood, and labor-force timing.
Personal Contrast Highlights Quiet Revolution
- Claudia Goldin contrasts her sister (group three) who married early and returned to teaching with her own (group four) cohort that delayed family for career gains.
- This family contrast illustrates the rapid social change Goldin calls the "quiet revolution."
