Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Lorenzo Cappellari
Author-X-Name-First: Lorenzo 
Author-X-Name-Last: Cappellari
Author-Email: lorenzo.cappellari@unicatt.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Author-Workplace-Name: Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Author-Name: Antonio Di Paolo
Author-X-Name-First: Antonio 
Author-X-Name-Last: Di Paolo


Title: Bilingual Schooling and Earnings: Evidence from a Language-in-Education Reform
Abstract: We exploit the 1983 language-in-education reform that introduced Catalan alongside Spanish as
medium of instruction in Catalan schools to estimate the labour market value of bilingual education.
Identification is achieved in a difference-in-differences framework exploiting variation in exposure
to the reform across years of schooling and years of birth. We find positive wage returns to
bilingual education and no effects on employment, hours of work or occupation. Results are robust
to education-cohort specific trends or selection into schooling and are mainly stemming from
exposure at compulsory education. We show that the effect worked through increased Catalan
proficiency for Spanish speakers and that there were also positive effects for Catalan speakers from
families with low education. These findings are consistent with human capital effects rather than
with more efficient job search or reduced discrimination. Exploiting the heterogeneous effects of
the reform as an instrument for proficiency we find sizeable earnings effects of skills in Catalan.
Length: 43
Creation-Date: 2015-11
File-URL: http://dipartimenti.unicatt.it/economia-finanza-def032.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
File-Function: First version, 2015
Number: def032
Classification-JEL: J24, J31, I28. 
Keywords: Bilingual education, returns to schooling, language-in-education reform, Catalonia.
Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie1:def032