Modeling Immigrants' Language Skills

62 Pages Posted: 1 Sep 2007

See all articles by Barry R. Chiswick

Barry R. Chiswick

University of Illinois at Chicago; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Paul W. Miller

Curtin University of Technology - School of Economics and Finance; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; Curtin University - Centre for Research in Applied Economics

Date Written: August 2007

Abstract

One in nine people between the ages of 18 and 64 in the US, and every second foreign-born person in this age bracket, speaks Spanish at home. And whereas around 80 percent of adult immigrants in the US from non-English speaking countries other than Mexico are proficient in English, only about 50 percent of adult immigrants from Mexico are proficient. The use of a language other than English at home, and proficiency in English, are both analyzed in this paper using economic models and data from the 2000 US Census. The results demonstrate the importance of immigrants' educational attainment, their age at migration and years spent in the US to their language skills. The immigrants' mother tongue is also shown to affect their English proficiency; immigrants with a mother tongue more distant from English being less likely to be proficient. Finally, immigrants living in ethnic enclaves have lesser proficiency in English than immigrants who live in predominately English-speaking areas of the US. The results for females are generally very similar to those for males, the findings from an ordered probit approach to estimation are similar to the findings from a binary probit model, and the conclusions drawn from the analyses mirror those in studies based on the 1980 and 1990 US Censuses. Thus, the model of language skills presented appears to be remarkably robust across time and between the genders.

Keywords: immigrants, language, enclaves, human capital

JEL Classification: F22, J15, J24, J40

Suggested Citation

Chiswick, Barry R. and Miller, Paul W. and Miller, Paul W., Modeling Immigrants' Language Skills (August 2007). IZA Discussion Paper No. 2974, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1011140 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1011140

Barry R. Chiswick (Contact Author)

University of Illinois at Chicago ( email )

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Paul W. Miller

Curtin University of Technology - School of Economics and Finance ( email )

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Australia

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Curtin University - Centre for Research in Applied Economics ( email )

GPO Box U1987
Perth, Western Australia 6845
Australia

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