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Measuring the Wage Costs of Limited English

2008; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0739986308320470

1552-6364

Darrick Hamilton, Arthur H. Goldsmith, William Darity,

Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

Scholars have found that poor English proficiency is negatively associated with wages using self-reported measures. However, these estimates may suffer from misclassification bias. Interviewer ratings are likely to more accurately proxy employer assessment of worker language ability. Using self-reported and interviewer ratings from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, the authors estimate the impact of English proficiency on wages for men ( n = 267) and women ( n = 178) with Mexican ancestry residing in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Use of interviewer proficiency ratings suggests a larger and more gradational language penalty as fluency falls, and women face a stronger penalty than their male counterparts. Moreover, controlling for worker accent and skin shade does little to alter these effects.