Claudia Goldin is the first female tenured professor at Harvard University and one of the most famous female economists in the world. As an economic historian and labor economist, Golding's research interests include income inequality, gender economics, technological revolution, education and immigration. 

Goldin received 2020 Citation Laureate Award in the Economics category for her contributions to labor economics, particularly analysis of women and gender imcome gaps. The research achievements of the winners of "Citation Laureate Award" are generally considered to have reached the "Nobel Prize level", and are also known as the "Nobel Prize Wind Vane". Therefore, Goldin has always been regarded as the most potential female economist to win the Nobel Prize in Economics after Elinor Ostrom and Esther Duflo.
 

PKU Financial Review interviewed Claudia Goldin to discuss the influence of population aging on the female.
 

PKU Financial Review: The United States is now using immigration to adjust its aging problem. China and Japan may have more similarities. Based on your research, what do you think is the best way to combat aging in China?
 

Claudia Goldin: It is not possible to address the aging problem quickly through an increase in fertility since that will increase the dependency ratio long before it has a chance to reduce it. Immigration is one way to decrease the dependency ratio quickly. Alternatively, one must just adjust to a population with a larger group of older people and increase the age at which retirement benefits (if there are any) are received.
 

PKU Financial Review: In most parts of the world today, women live longer than men. In OECD countries, the difference in life expectancy between men and women is about 4 to 6 years (7 years in Japan). In your paper "XX>XY?: The Changing Female Advantage in Life Expectancy", you described that because infectious diseases are controlled, both men and women benefit, but women benefit more, so women live longer. In an aging country like China, women retire many years earlier than men. Do you think this is unreasonable?
 

Claudia Goldin: I don’t know whether it is unreasonable, but it may be unnecessary. It probably came about because women married men who were older by 3-5 years. Therefore, if both were to retire together, women would retire at younger ages. In the US there are an equal fraction of older couples in which the woman works and the man is retired as the other way around. In a paper I wrote “Women Working Longer” we show that birth cohorts of women who had more college education and more advanced degrees had careers that lasted long into their sixties and even seventies. These women wanted to continue with their careers rather than retiring even if they had the ability to retire.
 

PKU Financial Review: Who do you think is the best country in the world to combat the effects of aging? What is its policy?
 

Claudia Goldin: To know what is “best,” one needs to have some objective function. Furthermore, one can age “well” and require less care. A 70 year old today requires less care than a 70 year old did 100 years ago.

Claudia Goldin
The first female tenured professor at Harvard University
The most famous female economists in the world
 2020 Citation Laureate Award in the Economics Winner 

* This article has been translated and published in PKU Financial Review.