English Language Premium in a Marriage Market: Experimental Evidence from Delhi

Tomohisa Miyamoto and Arjun Bedi

No 17366, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In India, fluency in English remains a status symbol for the wealthy and educated middle class, while creating a divide between those who have strong English language skills and those who do not. This study deploys a correspondence experiment conducted on a matrimonial website, to examine returns to English language skills for females in a marriage market in Delhi. Indicating strong English language skills in a marriage profile increases the number of views and interests received by 20% and 38%, respectively. Rather than relying on a purely passive approach of receiving attention from unknown users, in a more active stage of the experiment, expressions of interest were sent from female profiles to randomly assigned male profiles. While there is no overall effect of English language proficiency on the interest response rate, language fluency makes a difference for some subgroups. For lower caste women the English language premium is 13 percentage points (43%) and while both lower and upper caste males are more likely to respond to lower caste women with strong English language skills, the effect is substantially larger, 14.3 percentage points or 47%, in the case of upper caste males. The results suggest that English language proficiency expands the set of potential marriage partners and may help promote inter-caste alliances.

Keywords: English; return to language skills; caste; social mobility; marriage market; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J64 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2024-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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