The Language Ability of U.S. Immigrants: Assimilation and Cohort Effects

This paper uses data from the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census of Population to examine the English language skills of natives and immigrants. The first main finding is that lack of fluency in spoken English is rare among native- born Americans. In 1990, 98.4 % of natives aged 18 to 64 reported to the U.S. in large numbers during the past 30 years, such as Hispanics and East Asians a substantial fraction were not fluent when they entered grade school, but at most 3-5% of teenagers and adults in these groups reported speaking English poorly or not at all. Second the vast majority of immigrants speak English well. In 1990, only 1/4 of immigrants reported speaking English poorly or not at all, though more than 1/2 of Mexicans and 1/3 of immigrants from other non- English speaking western hemisphere countries could not speak proper English. Although English skills improve with length of residence, after 30 or more years in the U.S. over 1/4 of Mexican immigrants spoke English poorly or not at all. Third, since the 1950s there has been a trend decrease in the probability of fluency (speaking only English or speaking it very well) among new immigrants of about 0.1 % per year, caused by the shift from European immigrants with strong English skills to Latin American and East Asian immigrants who arrive speaking less English. Overall, women are slightly more likely to be fluent than men, especially East Asian and European women. Even after controlling for differences in education,years since arrival and other factors, large differences in English skills by region of origin remain. These differences seem to be more associated with geographic distance from the U.S. than with the source country's per capita income or linguistic distance from English.

The Wages and Language Skills of U.S. Immigrants

This paper finds that immigrants on average earned about $0.50/hour less than native-born Americans in 1989. Immigrants from some regions earned much more than natives, while others, especially from Mexico, earned much less. This paper also finds that when immigrants first arrive in the U.S. they earn significantly less than native workers, but they close the gap by about 0.8 percentage points with each added year of residence. As a result, the wage of the typical immigrant who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s eventually surpassed the average native wage. Improvements in English language skills contributed 6 to 18 percent of this narrowing, depending on sex and education level. The remainder came from unmeasured sources of assimilation. However, since the 1950s and 1960s the wage gap between natives and newly arrived immigrants has widened by 0.2 to 0.6 percentage points annually. Because they start with a larger disadvantage the average wage of more recent immigrants may never exceed the average native wage. A decline in the average education of newly arrived immigrants accounts for 4-23% percent of the starting wage gap, and shifts in the source countries of new immigrants from Europe to Latin America and Asia account for 73 to 95 percent. Changes in English skills and in other factors have played little role in this relative decline. This analysis also finds a significant return to English skills. Even after controlling for education, region of origin, and years of U.S. residence, workers are rewarded for speaking English well. Differences between each of the five English skill categories reported in the Census data are about the same as the return to an additional year of schooling.