Intergenerational Transmission of Language Capital and Economic Outcomes

Teresa Casey () and Christian Dustmann
Additional contact information
Teresa Casey: London School of Economics

No 3074, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of language capital amongst immigrants, and the effect of language deficiencies on the economic performance of second generation immigrants. Using a long panel that oversamples immigrants, we can follow their children after they have left the parental home. Our results show a sizeable significant association between parents’ and children’s fluency, conditional on parental and family characteristics. We find that language deficiencies of the second generation are associated with poorer labour market outcomes for females only. Finally, we find a strong relationship between parental fluency and female labour market outcomes, which works through the child’s language proficiency.

Keywords: human capital; language proficiency of immigrants; intergenerational transmission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-mig
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: Journal of Human Resources, 2008, 43 (3), 660 - 687

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3074.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Intergenerational Transmission of Language Capital and Economic Outcomes (2008)
Working Paper: Intergenerational transmission of language capital and economic outcomes (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3074

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().