What Holds Back the Second Generation?: The Intergenerational Transmission of Language Human Capital Among Immigrants

Abstract

In 2000 Census microdata, various outcomes of second-generation immigrants are related to their parents' age at arrival in the United States, and in particular whether that age fell within the "critical period" of language acquisition. We interpret this as an effect of the parents' Englishlanguage skills and construct an instrumental variable for parental English proficiency. Estimates of the effect of parents' English-speaking proficiency using two-stage least squares yield significant, positive results for children's English-speaking proficiency and preschool attendance, and significant, negative results for dropping out of high school and being below age-appropriate grade. (JEL J13, J24, J62)

Migration and Education

“…For Australia, find strong links between parents' measured and unmeasured determinants of language proficiency and the language skills of their children, in particular between mothers and their children. Bleakley and Chin (2008) show that parental language skills have a significant positive causal effect on U.S.-born children's ability to speak English. Interestingly, this positive effect is only present while the children are young but fades out by the time they reach middle school.…”

“…However, the poorer language skills when young turn out to have detrimental long-term consequences for the children's educational outcomes in terms of drop-out rates, attendance of age-appropriate grades and attendance of preschool. 66 Unlike Bleakley and Chin (2008), who use data from the 2000 U.S. Census, and , who use data from the 1996 Australian Census, Casey and Dustmann (2008) use repeated information on both parents and their children from the German Socio-66 As in Bleakley and Chin (2004), the authors use the parents' age at arrival interacted with a dummy for nonEnglish-speaking country of origin as an instrument for their English language skills, making this the probably most convincing strategy to deal with the endogeneity of parental language skills.…”

Intergenerational Transmission of Language Capital and Economic Outcomes

“…First, we study the effect of parental characteristics, and in particular parental proficiency in the host country language, on the language proficiency of their children. Bleakley and Chin (2004b) analyse the relationship between parents' language proficiency and that of their children for the US. Their analysis is based on data from the 2000 US Census which provides self-reported language proficiency of parents as well as their children.…”

“…Our data is quite different. Unlike Bleakley and Chin (2004b) and Chiswick et al (2005), we have repeated information on both parents and their children. This allows us to address the problem of measurement error -which is serious in self-reported data on language (see Dustmann and van Soest 2001) -by using an 4 averaged measure.…”

“…This allows us to address the problem of measurement error -which is serious in self-reported data on language (see Dustmann and van Soest 2001) -by using an 4 averaged measure. Also, while Bleakley and Chin (2004b) and Chiswick et al (2005) observe children only before the age of 17, and if they have not yet left the parental household, our information on children's language proficiency is collected after the age of 16, and independent of the child leaving the parental household. This avoids selection and allows us to investigate not alone the association between parental language proficiency and that of their children, but also the children's later economic outcomes.…”