Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The impact of host language proficiency on employment outcomes among immigrants in Spain

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Empirica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper presents estimates of the impact of host language proficiency on the probability of immigrants having an employment. The article uses data from the Spanish National Immigrant Survey and relies on two complementary econometric approaches, a 2SLS instrumental variable model and a bivariate probit model. Host language proficiency is instrumented using Bleakley and Chin (Rev Econ Stat 86:481–496, 2004) strategy, which exploits the fact that younger children learn languages more easily than older ones. Average treatment effects indicate that host language proficiency raises the probability of having a job by about 15 and 22 percentage points among men and women respectively. However, local effects can be more than twice as large.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We thank an anonymous referee for drawing our attention to this point.

  2. One of the main concerns of the National Statistics Institute was to design an effective strategy to locate immigrants, as they typically are a notoriously difficult population to pinpoint. The strategy adopted was to resort to the Spanish municipal population census. By 2007 immigrants in the census list had automatic right to basic medical care for themselves and their families, and to educational privileges for their children. This remarkably liberal migration policy in Spain provided a powerful incentive for immigrants to be present on this population register regardless of their legal status. In this respect, the potential problem of immigrants attempting to be ‘invisible’ was minimized (see Reher and Requena 2009). An effective sample of 17,700 households, in which there was at least one foreign-born person 16 years or older, was generated. The response rate (i.e., households with at least one individual completing the full questionnaire) was 87.5%.

  3. The results of the paper do not change when inactive individuals are dropped from the analysis.

  4. Individuals whose age at arrival—a crucial variable in our analysis—was reported to be higher than their current age were dropped (6.9% of the selected sample). Similarly, individuals with missing data in variables that were relevant in the regression stage (Spanish proficiency, age at arrival, schooling level and labour status) were dropped from the analysis (6.8% of the sample). In Table 8 in the “Appendix” section we show summary statistics for the filtered and unfiltered data. We find that item non-response does not alter substantially the composition of the sample.

  5. The paper follows a stringent criterion by considering only individuals who claim to be able to speak Spanish ‘very well’. Results under the alternative classification 1–2 against 3–4 displayed slightly lower returns and are available upon request.

  6. Alternative parameterizations yielded similar results, as shown in Table 9 of the “Appendix” section.

  7. This is done by using STATA command biprobittreat developed by Chiburis et al. (2011). See Habibov and Zainiddinov (2015) for further applications.

  8. The GDP is from the World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD. Accessed: July 17, 2018.

References

  • Akbulut-Yuksel M, Bleakley H, Chin A (2011) The effects of English proficiency among childhood immigrants: are Hispanics different? In: Leal D, Trejo SJ (eds) Latinos and the economy. Springer, New York, pp 255–283

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Aldashev A, Gernandt J, Thomsen SL (2009) Language usage, participation, employment and earnings: evidence for foreigners in West Germany with multiple sources of selection. Labour Econ 16(3):330–341

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amuedo-Dorantes C, de la Rica S (2007) Labor market assimilation of recent immigrants in Spain. Br J Ind Relat 45(2):257–284

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Angrist J, Pischke S (2009) Mostly harmless econometrics: an Empiricist’s companion. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Baum CF, Christopher F (2006) An introduction to modern econometrics using Stata. Stata press, Texas

    Google Scholar 

  • Berman E, Lang K, Siniver E (2003) Language-skill complementarity: returns to immigrant language acquisition. Labour Econ 10(3):265–290

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blackaby D, Drinkwater S, Leslie D, Murphy P (1997) A picture of male and female unemployment among Britain’s ethnic minorities. Scott J Polit Econ 44(2):182–197

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bleakley H, Chin A (2004) Language skills and earnings: evidence from childhood immigrants. Rev Econ Stat 86:481–496

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bleakley H, Chin A (2010) Age at arrival, english proficiency, and social assimilation among US immigrants. Am Econ J Appl Econ 2(1):165–192

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bound J, Jaeger D, Baker R (1995) Problems with instrumental variable estimation when the correlation between instruments and the endogenous explanatory variables is weak. J Am Stat Assoc 90(430):443–450

    Google Scholar 

  • Budría S, Swedberg P (2015) The impact of language proficiency on immigrants’ earnings in Spain’. Rev Econ Appl 23(67):63–91

    Google Scholar 

  • Budría S, Martinez de Ibarreta C, Swedberg P (2017) The impact of host language proficiency across the immigrants’ earning distribution in Spain. IZA J Dev Migr 7:12

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chiburis RC, Das J, Lokshin M (2011) A practical comparison of the bivariate probit and linear IV estimators. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 5601, p 44

  • Chiburis RC, Das J, Lokshin M (2012) A practical comparison of the bivariate probit and linear IV estimators. Econ Lett 117:762–766

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chiswick B, Miller PW (1995) The endogeneity between language and earnings: international analyses. J Labor Econ 13(2):246–288

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chiswick B, Miller PW (2009) Earnings and occupational attainment among immigrants. Ind Relat J Econ Soc 48(3):454–465

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chiswick B, Miller PW (2010) Occupational language requirements and the value of English in the US labor market’. J Popul Econ 23:353–372

    Google Scholar 

  • Chiswick B, Repetto G (2001) Immigrants adjustment in israel: the determinants of literacy and fluency in hebrew and the effects on earnings’ international migration: trends. Policy Econ Impact 2001:204–222

    Google Scholar 

  • Chiswick B, Le A, Miller P (2008) How immigrants fare across the earnings distribution in Australia and the US. Ind Labor Relat Rev 61(3):353–373

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Demiralp B (2011) Occupational self-selection in a labor market with moral hazard. Eur Econ Rev 55(4):497–519

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Paolo A (2011) Knowledge of Catalan, public/private sector choice and earnings: evidence from a double sample selection model. Hacienda Pública Española 197(2):9–35

    Google Scholar 

  • Di Paolo A, Raymond JL (2012) Language knowledge and earnings in Catalonia. J Appl Econ 15(1):89–118

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dustmann C, Fabbri F (2003) Language proficiency and labor market performance of immigrants in the UK. Econ J 113:695–717

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dustmann C, Van Soest A (2001) Language fluency and earnings: estimation with misclassified language indicators. Rev Econ Stat 83(4):663–674

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dustmann C, Van Soest A (2002) Language and the earnings of immigrants. Ind Labor Relat Rev 55(3):473–492

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fernández C, Ortega C (2008) Labor market assimilation of immigrants in Spain: employment at the expense of bad job-matches? Span Econ Rev 10:83–107

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Habibov N, Zainiddinov H (2015) Effect of TV and radio family planning messages on the probability of modern contraception utilization in post-Soviet Central Asia. Int J Health Manag 32:E17–E38

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen R (2012) The centrality of employment in immigrant integration in Europe. Migration Policy Institute, Washington DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayfron J (2001) Language training, language proficiency and earnings of immigrants in Norway. Appl Econ 33:1971–1979

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hurst ME, Chiswick BR (2000) The employment, unemployment and unemployment compensation benefits of immigrants. IZA discussion paper series, no 129. Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn

    Google Scholar 

  • Isphording I (2013) Returns to foreign language skills of immigrants in Spain. Labour 27(4):443–461

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jimenez-Catalan RM (2003) Sex differences in L2 vocabulary learning strategies. Int J Appl Linguist 13:54–77

    Google Scholar 

  • Keane M, Wolpin K (1997) The career decisions of young men. J Polit Econ 105(3):473–522

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lazear EP (1995) Personnel economics, vol 1993. MIT press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Reher D, Requena M (2009) The National Immigrant Survey of Spain: a new data source for migration studies in Europe. Demogr Res 20:253–278

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rendón S (2007) The Catalan premium: language and employment in Catalonia. J Popul Econ 20:669–686

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shields MA, Price SW (2001) Language fluency and immigrant employment prospects: evidence from Britain’s ethnic minorities. Appl Econ Lett 8(11):741–745

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shields MA, Price SW (2002) The English language fluency and occupational success of ethnic minority immigrant men living in English metropolitan areas. J Popul Econ 15(1):137–160

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simón H, Sanromá E, Ramos R (2008) Labour segregation and immigrant and native-born wage distributions in Spain: an analysis using matched employer–employee data. Span Econ Rev 10(2):135–168

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Springer S, Deutsch G (1989) Left brain, right brain. Freeman, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Stock JH, Wright J, Yogo M (2002) A survey of weak instruments and weak identification in generalized method of moments. J Bus Econ Stat Am Stat Assoc 20(4):518–529

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tainer E (1988) English language proficiency and the determination of earnings among foreign-born men. J Hum Resour 23:108–122

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhen Y (2013) The effects of English proficiency on earnings of US foreign-born immigrants: does gender matter. J Finance Econ 1(1):27–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, Universidad Nebrija, C/de Sta. Cruz de Marcenado, 27, 28015, Madrid, Spain

    Santiago Budría

  2. Department of Economics, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, C/Alberto Aguilera 23, s/n, 28015, Madrid, Spain

    Santiago Budría & Alberto Colino

  3. Department of Quantitative Methods, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, C/Alberto Aguilera 23, s/n, 28015, Madrid, Spain

    Santiago Budría & Carlos Martínez de Ibarreta

  4. IZA, Geneva, Switzerland

    Santiago Budría

Authors
  1. Santiago Budría
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alberto Colino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Carlos Martínez de Ibarreta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carlos Martínez de Ibarreta.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 8, 9 and 10.

Table 8 Data with and without item-non-response
Full size table
Table 9 2SLS effects of Spanish proficiency using other parametrizations of the instrument
Full size table
Table 10 Immigrants by country of birth
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Budría, S., Colino, A. & Martínez de Ibarreta, C. The impact of host language proficiency on employment outcomes among immigrants in Spain. Empirica 46, 625–652 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10663-018-9414-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10663-018-9414-x

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation