Technological progress is a key source of economic growth, but its effects
aren’t always fully captured by its effects on gross domestic product.
Sometimes a new technology changes everything — the way we work, the way we
live, the way we relate to one another in society.
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Consider, for example, the effects of the birth control pill.
If it never occurred to you that modern birth control was a transformative
technology, or more broadly that expanding women’s ability to choose had
profound economic as well as social effects, you have plenty of company. There
have been innumerable books and articles about the economic impacts of, for
example, globalization and information technology.
But in 2002, when Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz published an article
titled “The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women’s Career and
Marriage Decisions,” they were entering a sparsely populated field.
“could be more serious in college, plan for an independent future, and form their identities before marriage and family.”
On Monday, Goldin, a professor at Harvard, received the Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences in recognition of her role in advancing our
understanding of women’s labor market outcomes. It was a richly deserved honor.
In fact, if you ask me, the Nobel announcement sold Goldin a bit short by
failing to note her hugely important contributions beyond the issue of women’s
work. In particular, it didn’t mention her work on inequality more broadly,
notably her role in documenting the sudden and drastic decline in inequality
that took place in the 1940s, creating the middle-class society I grew up in
(which has now been destroyed).
Which is not to say that women’s work is a minor issue. It’s an immensely
important subject, one whose study Goldin pioneered.
Put it this way: For most of the 1960s, American women in their prime
working years were less than half as likely as men to be part of the paid labor
force; by 2000 three quarters of the gender gap in labor force participation
had been eliminated.
This represented a large increase in the economy’s labor supply, and hence
in potential gross domestic product; my back-of-the-envelope calculations
suggest that the impact of rising female employment on economic growth was
comparable to, say, the effects of globalization.
But the effect on GDP was only part of the story.
In 2006 Goldin published an extraordinary, panoramic overview of the
history of women at work in America. As she documented, the percentage of women
in the paid labor force rose steadily between around 1930 and 1970, a rise
Goldin attributed to the combination of the economy’s shift away from manual
labor toward clerical work and rising female education, along with the
diffusion of household technologies such as refrigerators and washing machines
that freed more married women to work outside the home.
But these changes, she argued, did not at first fundamentally change the
way society and women themselves thought about women’s work. For the most part,
women were seen and saw themselves as secondary earners, working to supplement
their families’ income but ready to drop out of the workforce if they had
children or their husbands earned enough that they didn’t need the money.
Around 1970, however, there was what Goldin called a “quiet revolution” in
the economic role of women, as women began to view work much the same way that
men did. They saw themselves as likely to remain employed even after marriage,
which led them to get more education, get married later and, as men always had,
see their jobs as an important part of their identity. This was a profound
transformation of society — I would say for the better.
And one important enabler of this transformation was the birth control
pill, which made it easier for women to delay marriage, which in turn, Goldin
wrote, meant that they “could be more serious in college, plan for an
independent future, and form their identities before marriage and
family.”
That said, you shouldn’t buy into crude technological determinism. Goldin
and Katz noted that the pill didn’t have its most profound effects until legal
restrictions that made it unavailable to most single women were removed in the
late 1960s. Goldin’s latest paper, released just as she received the Nobel, is
titled “Why Women Won” and emphasizes the importance of a large expansion of
women’s rights between 1965 and 1973.
And as I was reviewing Goldin’s work for this column, I couldn’t help
wondering whether those victories are in danger.
Much commentary I’ve seen about Goldin since the Nobel announcement
focuses on the prospects for removing the remaining barriers to women’s
advancement. But in the current political environment, I think we should also
be worried about retrogression. Conservatives have succeeded in overturning Roe
v. Wade, with many red states quickly moving to ban abortion. A significant
faction is now setting its sights on restricting access to birth control, and you
shouldn’t assume that it won’t happen.
Foreboding aside, however, this is a wonderful moment for the economics
profession. Claudia Goldin’s pathbreaking research, deeply grounded in history
yet hugely relevant to the present, is a model of what social science should
be. This is truly a Nobel to celebrate.
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