The Effect of Language Ability on Chinese Immigrants’ Earning in Hong Kong
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18533/ijbsr.v5i11.885Keywords:
Assimilation, Human Capital Theory, Immigrant, Language Ability.Abstract
After the handover of Hong Kong sovereignty to China in 1997, the language importance gap between English and Putonghua in Hong Kong has been narrowing, even English language is remain an international language and being adopted in legal documents, but foreign investors cannot avoid speaking Putonghua when doing business with Chinese enterprises, these language importance changes provide a new discourse to human capital theorists. In Hong Kong, natives are desire to be proficient in Putonghua and English while immigrants are eager to learn English and Cantonese, thus, investigating languages skills (Putonghua, English and Cantonese) returns yield a remarkable contribution to the existing immigrants assimilation literature. This paper employs language skills to understand a new assimilation process in Hong Kong and proves that Putonghua language skills are enhancing immigrants’ and natives’ earning, for industries which have better utilization of Putonghua language skills allow better return rate for immigrants, besides, it also shows the marginal effects of different languages on earnings are industry and occupation dependent.
References
Bauer T., Epstein G. S. and Gang I. N. (2005) Enclaves, Language, and the Location Choice of Migrants, Journal of Population Economics, 18:649-662
Chiswick B. R. (1991) Speaking, Reading, and Earnings among Low-Skilled Immigrants, Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 9, Apr, 2:149-170
Chiswick B. R. and Miller P. W. (1995) The Endogeneity between Language an Earnings: International Analysis, Journal of Labor Economics 13:246-88
Chiswick B. R. and Miller P. W. (2002) Immigrant Earnings: Language Skills, Linguistic Concentrations and the Business Cycle, Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 15, Jan, 15:31-57
Dávila, A., Bohara A. K., and Saenz R. (1993) Accent Penalties and the Earnings of Mexican Americans. Social Science Quarterly 74:902-16
Dávila A. and Mora M. T. (2000a) English-Skills, Earnings, and the Occupational Sorting of Mexican Americans along the U.S.-Mexico Border, International Migration Review Vol. 34, 1:133-157
Dávila A. and Mora M. T. (2000b). “The English Fluency of Recent Hispanic Immigrants to the U.S. in 1980 and 1990,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 48(2):369-89.
Dávila, A., and Marie T. M. (2004) “English-Language Skills and the Earnings of Self-Employed Immigrants in the U.S.: A Note.” Industrial Relations 43(2): 386-91.
Dustmann C. (1999) Temporary Migration, Human Capital, and Language Fluency of Migrants, The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Vol. 101, Jun, 2:297-314
Lam, K. C. and Liu P. W., (September 1998), Immigration and the Economy of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong Press, 200 pp
Lazear E.P. (1999) Culture and Language, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 107, 6:95-126
Lui, H. K.(2007), The Returns to Language Ability in Hong Kong: Before and After the Handover. Applied Economics Letters 14 (February): 121–125
McManus W., Gould W., and Welch F. (1983) Earnings of Hispanic Men: The Role of English Language Proficiency, Journal of Labor Economics 1:101-30
McManus W. S. (1990) Labor Market Effects of Language Enclaves: Hispanic Men in the United States, Journal of Human Resources 25:228-35
Mincer, J. (1974) Schooling, Experience and Earnings, Columbia University Press for National Bureau of Economic Research, New York
Stolzenberg R. M. (1990) Ethnicity, Geography, and Occupational Achievement of Hispanic Men in the United States, American Sociological Review 55:413-54
Stolzenberg R. M. and Tienda M. (1997) English Proficiency, Education, and the Conditional Economic Assimilation of Hispanic and Asian -Origin Men, Social Science Research 26:25-51
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).