Family Matters: The Role of the Family in Immigrants' Destination Language Acquisition

Barry Chiswick, Yew Liang Lee () and Paul Miller
Additional contact information
Yew Liang Lee: University of Western Australia

No 460, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the relationship among family members in the determinants of destination language proficiency among immigrants. A model of immigrant language proficiency is augmented to include dynamics among family members. It is tested using data on a sample of recent immigrants. Children are shown to have a negative effect on their mother’s language proficiency, but no effect on their father’s. There is a substantial positive correlation between the language skills of spouses. This is due to the correlation between spouses in both the measured determinants and the unmeasured determinants of destination language skills among spouses.

Keywords: family; language skills; Immigrants; longitudinal data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J16 J24 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2002-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published - published in: Journal of Population Economics, 2005, 18 (4), 631–647

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Related works:
Journal Article: Family matters: the role of the family in immigrants' destination language acquisition (2005)
Working Paper: Family Matters: The Role of the Family in Immigrants' Destination Language Acquisition (2002)
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