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English Proficiency and Social Assimilation Among Immigrants

For many immigrants to the United States, limited proficiency in the English language is a formidable challenge to both economic and social integration into their new home. Immigrants who speak English poorly are more superficially foreign than others, and this may contribute to their being discriminated against by U.S. natives. Moreover, immigrants with limited English proficiency might self-segregate, compounding this social and economic isolation. | English Proficiency and Social Assimilation Among Immigrants: An Instrumental-Variables Approach* Hoyt Bleakley Graduate School of Business University of Chicago Aimee Chin Department of Economics University of Houston and NBER March 2007 ABSTRACT Using 2000 Census microdata on childhood immigrants, we relate family- formation variables to their age at arrival in the United States, and in particular whether that age fell within the “critical period” of language acquisition. We interpret the observed differences as an effect of English-language skills and construct an instrumental variable for English-language proficiency. Two-stage- least-squares estimates suggest that English proficiency raises the probabilities of marrying a native, being divorced, or having a high-earning and/or more educated spouse, and reduces the number of children. (JEL J12, J13, J15, J24) * Bleakley: Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, 5807 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL, 60637 (email: bleakley@chicagogsb.edu); Chin: Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Houston, 204 McElhinney Hall, Houston, TX 77204-5019 (email: achin@uh.edu). We thank Chinhui Juhn for helpful comments and discussion. We also thank Mevlude Akbulut for excellent research assistance. Financial support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R03HD051562) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors bear sole responsibility for the content of this paper. I. Introduction For many immigrants to the United States, limited proficiency in the English language is a formidable challenge to both economic and social integration into their new home. Immigrants who speak English poorly are more superficially foreign than others, and this may contribute to their being discriminated against by U.S. natives. Moreover, immigrants with limited English proficiency might self-segregate, compounding this social and economic isolation. The recent increase in .