Empirica
Volume 46, Issue 4, 2019, Pages 625-652

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

Budría S. , Colino A. , Martínez de Ibarreta C.*
  • a Department of Business Administration, Universidad Nebrija, C/de Sta. Cruz de Marcenado, 27, Madrid, 28015, Spain, Department of Economics, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, C/Alberto Aguilera 23, s/n, Madrid, 28015, Spain, Department of Quantitative Methods, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, C/Alberto Aguilera 23, s/n, Madrid, 28015, Spain, IZA, Geneva, Switzerland
  • b Department of Economics, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, C/Alberto Aguilera 23, s/n, Madrid, 28015, Spain
  • c Department of Quantitative Methods, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, C/Alberto Aguilera 23, s/n, Madrid, 28015, Spain

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. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Author Keywords

Immigration Instrumental variables Biprobit Host language proficiency

Index Keywords

Spain immigrant Multivariate Analysis language employment immigration
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85053464556&doi=10.1007%2fs10663-018-9414-x&partnerID=40&md5=0e5784eda67ff57569184e46e0e8b774
DOI: 10.1007/s10663-018-9414-x
ISSN: 03408744
Cited by: 1
Original Language: English