Abstract
Previous research has found that among the native-born population, bilingual people earn less in the U.S. labour market. We examine whether a similar pattern exists in the U.K. and attempt to provide an explanation. We find that bilingual men do no worse than monolingual men, but that bilingual women earn significantly less than monolingual women. This is not explained by differences in cultural background, parental education or other family background variables. The result also holds when we control for various degrees of bias in unobserved characteristics. Instead, the result appears to be driven by differences across areas in the prevalence of bilingualism, with the negative earnings effects restricted to bilingual women living in areas with relatively low proportions of English speakers. The negative effects of bilingualism on women are also concentrated among speakers of South Asian languages and relatively uncommon languages.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Dustmann and Fabbri (2003), Bleakley and Chin (2004), Rooth and Saarela (2007), and Yao and van Ours (2015) consider the role of fluency in the language of the destination country; Blau et al. (2011) and Blau et al. (2013) analyse differences by country of origin, gender and intergenerational transmissions; and Bisin et al. (2011) investigate the influence of ethnicity.
- 2.
When analysing a relationship between one’s ability to speak several languages and his/her performance in the labour market, it is highly likely that many other factors (e.g. culture, different quality of education, social norms) that are correlated with bilingualism also affect one’s employability and income. If they are not explicitly accounted for the alleged relationship we are investigating may also capture these other influences, preventing any conclusions about the sole role of language. By comparing individuals born and brought up in the same country, we control for a wide range of such associated factors, which may otherwise confound the relationship.
- 3.
Very similar results are found when the father’s country of birth is controlled for instead.
- 4.
A similar pattern of results was found if the fraction of people in the local area speaking the respondent’s own language was used instead.
- 5.
Note that in Altonji et al. (2005) the assumption was that if all variables were observed the model would be fully explained and Rmax would be equal to 1.
- 6.
The choice of the maximum explanatory power assumed in the regression is justified by the fact that the highest R2 obtained in the regressions here does not exceed 0.25. Therefore, the assumption that the techniques correcting for bias can explain as much as 30% of the variation in the dependent variable is generous and more realistic than assuming 100% of the variation would have been explained.
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Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank participants at the IFO Workshop on Labour Market and Social Policy (April 2017), the European Society of Population Economics Annual Conference (June 2017), the CReAM/RWI Workshop on the Economics of Migration (September 2017), the European Economic Association Annual Congress (August 2018), a SOFI Brown Bag seminar, and a University of Western Australia Business School seminar for their helpful suggestions.
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Clifton-Sprigg, J., Papps, K.L. (2021). Bilingualism in the Labour Market. In: Cochrane, W., Cameron, M.P., Alimi, O. (eds) Labor Markets, Migration, and Mobility. New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives, vol 45. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9275-1_4
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