[9][2] In October 2023, she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes”.

[17][18] As a child, Claudia was determined to become an archaeologist, but upon reading Paul de Kruif's The Microbe Hunters (1927) in junior high school, she became drawn to bacteriology.

It was found that the treatment "may have been successful at liberal arts colleges and possibly at the larger universities that, in addition, had their own RCT [randomized controlled trial].

"[35][36] For 28 years ending in 2017, Goldin was the director of the Development of the American Economy (DAE) Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Notably, with the late Frank Lewis, she wrote the groundbreaking piece "The Economic Cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and Implications" (1975).

She began with a series of articles on the high school movement and the shaping of higher education in the U.S. that culminated in her Economic History Association presidential address, "The Human Capital Century and American Leadership: Virtues of the Past" (2001).

[40][41][42] She then worked with Lawrence Katz to understand the history of economic inequality in America and its relationship to educational advances.

Their research produced many papers on the subject and was capped by the publication of The Race between Education and Technology (2008), which argues that the United States became the world's richest nation thanks to its schools.

"Orchestrating Impartiality: The Effect of 'Blind' Auditions on Female Musicians" (with Cecilia Rouse, 2000) is among her most highly cited papers.

She then began to focus on college women's quest for career and family and the reasons for the persistent gender gap in earnings.