Volume 19, Number 1 (Winter) 1984
Grenier, Gilles. 1984. “The Effects of Language Characteristics on the Wages of Hispanic-American Males.” Journal of Human Resources 19(1):35-52.
This paper reports an investigation of the extent to which the language handicap of Hispanic Americans explains their low economic status. Wage equations which include language attributes among the explanatory variables are estimated for a sample of Hispanic and non-Hispanic white males drawn from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education. It is found that language attributes have a significant effect on wages and that they explain an important proportion of the mean wage differential between non-Hispanics and Hispanics.
The author is Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa. This paper is adapted from a chapter of my Ph.D. dissertation, presented to the Department of Economics, Princeton University. I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Alan Blinder, Orley Ashenfelter, and Cordelia Reimers, for their generous assistance and encouragement. Among the many other persons who helped me in this endeavor, I am indebted in particular to David Bloom for his numerous comments and suggestions. Financial assistance from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged.
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