Seminar: Fertility, Health and Education of UK Immigrants: The Role of English Language Skills

Time: 13.00-14.00 hours
Location: CPB-office, Van Stolkweg 14, The Hague

Presentation: Yu Aoki (University of Aberdeen)

Discussant: TBA

Language: English

Registration: Please register by sending an email to seminars@cpb.nl.

Abstract subject:
This paper aims to identify the causal effects of English language skills on fertility, health and education outcomes of immigrants in England andWales. To identify the causal effects, we use the instrumental variable estimation strategy where age at arrival in the United Kingdom (UK) is exploited to construct an instrument for language skills. The idea of exploiting age at arrival is based on the phenomenon that a person who is exposed to a new language within the critical period of language acquisition (i.e., childhood) learns the language easily. This implies that immigrants who arrive in the UK at a young age would have better English language skills than those who arrive when they are older. Using a unique individual-level dataset that links census and life event records for the population living in England and Wales at the 2011 Census, we find that better English language skills significantly delay the age at which women have their first child, decrease the number of children a mother has, improve self-reported health, but do not affect a child’s birth weight. The impact on education achievement is also considerable: better English skills significantly raise the probability of having post-compulsory qualifications and academic degrees and significantly lower the probability of having no qualifications and compulsory level qualifications.

Seminars
CPB organises seminars for researchers. During these seminars, always held on Tuesday from 1.00 pm. to 2.00 pm., academic papers are presented and discussed. Read here how to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to our alert service (CPB Calendar).

Policy seminars
CPB also organises Policy seminars for policy makers, researchers and other stakeholders. These Policy seminars focus on policy implications. Policy seminars are held on Thursday from 1.00 pm. to 2.00 pm. Read here how to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to our alert service (CPB Calendar).