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

Santiago Budria Rodriguez (), Alberto Colino and Carlos Martínez de Ibarreta ()
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Alberto Colino: Universidad Pontificia Comillas
Carlos Martínez de Ibarreta: Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Empirica, 2019, vol. 46, issue 4, No 2, 625-652

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Immigration; Host language proficiency; Instrumental variables; Biprobit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J24 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10663-018-9414-x

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