Language Skills and Earnings: Evidence from Childhood Immigrants*

Hoyt Bleakley; Aimee Chin

doi:10.1162/003465304323031067

← Search

Language Skills and Earnings: Evidence from Childhood Immigrants*

Hoyt Bleakley¹; Aimee Chin²

¹ University of California San Diego · ² University of Houston

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2004 open access

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.

DOI: 10.1162/003465304323031067
Volume: 86 (2)
Pages: 481-496
Language: en
Export: BibTeX
Sources: openalex crossref