Bilinguals, College Enrollment, and Labor Market Consequences

• In Event: 75.012 - Rethinking Bilingual Education: New Research on the Economic Benefits of Bilingualism

Abstract

Objective: This study seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) Do bilingual students attend college at a higher rate than monolingual English speaking students? (2) Do bilingual students attend four-year colleges at a higher rate than
monolingual English speaking students? (3) What, therefore, is the likely impact on labor market earnings?
Conceptual Framework: The authors use a variation of the traditional model of student access and enrollment in higher education that has been used to account for the individual and institutional factors related to college access (Perna, 2006). In Perna’s model, four groups of factors impact college enrollment for students: individual, school context, institutional, and state-level. In this analysis we examine the impact of individual factors on college enrollment while also controlling for state fixed effects.
Data Sources: The study relies on a secondary analysis of data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002) administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The ELS:2002 is designed to monitor the progression of a national sample of students from tenth grade into young adulthood. In the base year of data collection, 2002, the ELS measured students' academic achievement in mathematics and readings standardized tests, collected demographic information, obtained information about students’ and parents’ college expectations, and parents’ participation in school activities. Subsequent waves of data collection took place in 2004, 2006, and most recently, in 2012.
Methods: The authors employ logistic regression models to estimate whether the 10th grader ever attended college. In some models, we include a state-level fixed effect to capture fixed differences across states, such as the costs of higher education and availability of statewide financial aid policies. We include numerous control variables to account for background characteristics of the students and other factors that could affect college going in this population. All models are estimated using sample ELS:2002 weights.
Results: Once we control for all observable characteristics, bilinguals have some advantage over English monolinguals, while “high-use bilinguals” (those that are more balanced bilinguals) have even higher odds of college going. Results for high-use bilinguals with state fixed effects are similar suggesting that even within states these differences persist. High-use bilinguals also appear to have higher odds of going to a four-year college, relative to English monolinguals in the sample.
Finally, linking data on average earnings for individuals with some college and with college degrees suggests that indirectly bilingualism has a very significant impact on labor market earnings.
Scholarly Significance: This study takes on the analysis of indirect effects of bilingualism on labor market earnings, an analysis that has not been conducted in prior economic studies that go straight to earnings’ analyses without considering the ways that education may be influenced by language skills and therefore mediate labor market outcomes. Using recent data on young people entering the labor market in a 21st Century globalized environment, with language skills that are more explicit (levels of bilingualism) results in very different findings from past economic studies.

Author

• Lucrecia Santibanez, Claremont Graduate University