Language Skills and Earnings: Evidence from Childhood Immigrants*

Hoyt Bleakley · Aimee Y. Chin

662 citations0/0 files storedThe Review of Economics and Statistics

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Migration and Labor Dynamics Labor market dynamics and wage inequality Labour Market and Migration

Abstract

Research on the effect of language skills on earnings is complicated by the endogeneity of language skills. This study exploits the phenomenon that younger children learn languages more easily than older children to construct an instrumental variable for language proficiency. We find a significant positive effect of English proficiency on wages among adults who immigrated to the United States as children. Much of this effect appears to be mediated through education. Differences between non-English-speaking origin countries and English-speaking ones that might make immigrants from the latter a poor control group for nonlanguage age-at-arrival effects do not appear to drive these findings.

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References

1990Maturational Constraints on Language Learning 2018The Economics of Immigration 1988A NEW SET OF INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF REAL PRODUCT AND PRICE LEVELS ESTIMATES FOR 130 COUNTRIES, 1950–1985 1999The Economic Analysis of Immigration 1995The Endogeneity between Language and Earnings: International Analyses 2000You Can't Take It with You? Immigrant Assimilation and the Portability of Human Capital 1996You Can't Take It With You? Immigrant Assimilation and the Portability of Human Capital 1996Language and the law. Ed. by John Gibbons. (Language in social life series.) London & New York: Longman, 1994. Pp. 476.

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