English as the Lingua Franca and the Economic Value of Other Languages : The Case of the Language of Work of Immigrants and Non-immigrants in the Montreal Labour Market

With data from the 2006 Canadian census, the authors investigate the determinants and the economic values of different languages used at work in the Montreal metropolitan area. The working population is divided into three mother tongue groups: French, English and Others. Three indicators are defined by the authors: use of French at work as a second language, use of English at work as a second language, and use of an official language at work as opposed to a non-official language. One interesting result that the authors found is that there is no relationship between schooling and the use of French at work for the English mother tongue group, while schooling is positively related to the use of English at work for the French mother tongue group and to the use of an official language at work for the Other mother tongues group. The authors look at the returns to using a second language at work by means of earnings regressions (with both OLS and IV to account for the endogeneity of the language of work). They found that for the English mother tongue group, using French at work does not pay. In contrast, there is a high payoff to using English at work for the French mother tongue group. For the Other mother tongues group, there is a high payoff to using an official language at work and a modest one to using English instead of French.

Department of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa. Working Paper #1107E

June 2011

en