Speak better, do better? Education and health of migrants in the UK

Yu Aokia (University of Aberdeen, UK) and Lualhati Santiagob (Office for National Statistics, London, UK) published in Labour Economics Volume 52 (June 2018)

Highlights

• Estimate the causal effects of English proficiency on the social outcomes of UK migrants.
• Use the critical period hypothesis of language acquisition to construct an instrument.
• Better English skills improve educational attainment and adult health, and affect fertility.
• An improvement in adult health likely occurred due to an improvement in educational attainment.

Abstract

Does proficiency in host-country language affect immigrant social outcomes?

This paper aims to address this question by estimating the causal effects of English language skills on education, health and fertility outcomes of immigrants in England and Wales.

We construct an instrument for language skills using age at arrival in the United Kingdom, exploiting the phenomenon that young children learn languages more easily than older children. Using a unique individual-level dataset that links the 2011 Census data to life event records, we find that better English language skills significantly improve educational attainment and adult health, and affect fertility behaviour, but do not affect child health.

Supplementary analysis suggests that a higher educational attainment as a result of better English language skills is a possibly important channel though which English proficiency affects immigrant health.

JEL classification: I10, I21, J13, J15

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