Ruth Klinov was born in Berlin, Germany in 1929 and immigrated to Eretz Yisrael (Mandatory Palestine) with her family in 1933. She completed all her academic studies at the Hebrew University, where she received a Ph.D. in economics in 1964, and joined the Department of Economics at the Hebrew University in 1966. She served as President of the Israeli Economic Association and as Head of the Public Council of Statistics. In 1970 Ruth Klinov was awarded, together with Nadav Halevi, the Peretz Naftali Prize in Economic and Social Sciences for their book The Economic Development of Israel.

Her primary research interests included: the development of the Israeli economy; the study of labor markets, wages, and sectoral structure in Israel; the economics of education, focusing on the return on educational capital and on the supply of educational services in Israel.

Ruth Klinov passed away in Jerusalem in 2015.