Language-in-education, language skills and the intergenerational transmission of language in a bilingual society

•We investigate the causal effect of parents’ linguistic skills on the intergenerational language transmission in a bilingual society.•Identification is achieved exploiting a language-in-education reform that introduced bilingualism in the Spanish region of Catalonia during the ‘80.•The reform impro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Labour economics 2021-06, Vol.70, p.101975, Article 101975
Main Authors: Caminal, Ramon, Cappellari, Lorenzo, Di Paolo, A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Intergenerational transmission
Language
Language proficiency
Language-in-education reform
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Summary:•We investigate the causal effect of parents’ linguistic skills on the intergenerational language transmission in a bilingual society.•Identification is achieved exploiting a language-in-education reform that introduced bilingualism in the Spanish region of Catalonia during the ‘80.•The reform improved oral skills in Catalan among native Spanish speakers, which increased their propensity to speak Catalan with the offspring. We investigate the causal effect of parents’ linguistic skills on the intergenerational language transmission in a bilingual society. We consider the case of Catalonia, where the two main speech communities, Spanish and Catalan, are of similar sizes, and both languages are official, and exploit the natural experiment generated by a language-in-education reform. We discuss theoretically the main alternative channels through which such policies may affect the language parents speak to their children. Empirically, we find that the reform improved oral skills in Catalan among native Spanish speakers. These greater skills increased the propensity to speak Catalan with the offspring, which highlights the intergenerational spillovers overs of the reform. We also show that the effect is not confounded by spurious trends, potential changes in language identity, and linguistically mixed partnership formation.
ISSN:0927-5371
1879-1034
DOI:10.1016/j.labeco.2021.101975