Age at Migration, Language Proficiency, and Socioeconomic Outcomes: Evidence From Australia

Abstract

This study estimates the causal effects of language proficiency on the economic and social integration of Australian immigrants. Identifying the effects of languages on socioeconomic outcomes is inherently difficult owing to the endogeneity of language skills. Using the phenomenon that younger children learn languages more easily than older children, we construct an instrumental variable for language proficiency. To achieve this, we consider the age at arrival of immigrants who came as children from Anglophone and non-Anglophone countries. We find a significant positive effect of English proficiency on wages and promotions among adults who immigrated to Australia as children. Higher levels of English proficiency are associated with increased risk-taking, more smoking, and more exercise for men, but have considerable health benefits for women. English language proficiency has a significant influence on partner choice and a number of social outcomes, as well as on children's outcomes, including their levels of academic achievement. The results are robust to alternative specifications, including accounting for between-sibling differences and alternative measures of English skills.

Economic Assimilation and Skill Acquisition: Evidence From the Occupational Sorting of Childhood Immigrants

“…In that sense, our work is more informative for the policy-oriented debate on the types of human capital investments that should be enhanced or incentivized in order to aid the assimilation of immigrants. It also complements other empirical studies on assimilation theory suggesting that acquisition of language fluency-and only that skill dimension-accounts for immigrants' faster earnings growth compared with nativeborn or Anglophone workers (Bleakley and Chin 2004;Borjas 2015;Guven and Islam 2015). We provide evidence that this is an incomplete view of the assimilation process.…”

Determinants of Migrant Career Success: A Study of Recent Skilled Migrants in Australia

“…One of the advantages of migrating at a younger age is that it gives migrants a longer period of time to socialize into the host country environment (Clark and Drinkwater, ; Wulff and Dharmalingam, ; Cheung et al., ; Guven and Islam, ). A longer period of exposure and interaction with host country nationals (e.g., Australians) is associated with greater identification with the host country and improvements in labour market performance (Inglis and Stromback, ; Coll and Magnuson, ; Brekke and Mastekaasa, ).…”

The causal effect of age at migration on youth educational attainment

“…Guven and Islam (2015) focus on the acquisition of language skills and find that age 11 is decisive for English language skills among adult immigrants.…”

“…A large literature argues that the educational attainment of immigrants benefits from a longer experience of the destination country environment: first, youths who start earlier to acquire a foreign language and who have more time to do so should be more successful in mastering that language; some authors exploit the effect of age at migration on language skills, in instrumental variable frameworks to identify the effect of language acquisition on, e.g., education, health and labor market outcomes (e.g., Guven and Islam 2015, Bleakley and Chin 2004, 2010. Second, migration might cause stress which may affect educational performance less if it is experienced at an earlier rather than later age.…”