Language Barriers and Immigrant Health

Andrew Clarke; Ingo E Isphording

doi:10.1002/hec.3358

Language Barriers and Immigrant Health

Health Econ. 2017 Jun;26(6):765-778. doi: 10.1002/hec.3358. Epub 2016 May 24.

Authors

Andrew Clarke¹, Ingo E Isphording²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Economics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
² Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany.

PMID: 27220030
DOI: 10.1002/hec.3358

Abstract

We study the impact of language deficiency on the health status of childhood migrants to Australia. Our identification strategy relies on a quasi-experiment comparing immigrants arriving at different ages and from different linguistic origins. In the presence of considerable non-classical measurement error in self-reported language proficiency, our results provide lower and upper bounds for a strong negative effect of English deficiency on health of between one half and a full standard deviation in the health score. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: International migration; health; language skills.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Australia
Communication Barriers*
Emigrants and Immigrants*
Health Status*
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Self Report
Socioeconomic Factors
Surveys and Questionnaires