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The Return to Knowledge of English in Non-English Speaking Country

We use a unique data set to examine the return to English knowledge. Our primary focus is on Russian immigrants to Israel, but we study native Israelis as well. Understanding the role of English in this setting is important for at least three reasons. | THE RETURN TO ENGLISH IN A NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRY: RUSSIAN IMMIGRANTS AND NATIVE ISRAELIS IN ISRAEL Kevin Lang Department of Economics Boston University 270 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02215 and NBER (lang@bu.edu) and Erez Siniver Department of Economics College of Management Rishon LeZion, Israel (sinivr@colman.ac.il) June 9, 2006 1. Introduction We use a unique data set to examine the return to English knowledge. Our primary focus is on Russian immigrants to Israel, but we study native Israelis as well. Understanding the role of English in this setting is important for at least three reasons. First, globalization and the ensuing growth in the importance of foreign language knowledge has become an important theme in the popular press. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that families seek nannies who speak a language other than English because “They want to give their children a head start in business in 20 years.” (Helen Riley-Collins, president of Aunt Ann's In-House Staffing in San Francisco, quoted in Hua, 2005). It is also commonly argued that the success of Canada, the United States and other countries with large immigrant populations reflects, in part, access to world markets fostered by the immigrant population’s knowledge of foreign languages and cultures (Farooqui, 2005). Yet, there has been surprisingly little research on the return to foreign language knowledge. The major exception is Grin (2001) who examines the role of English in Switzerland where its role as a lingua franca gives it a special status. There is also a modest literature on the value of second language knowledge in multilingual societies such as Canada and Switzerland (Grin and Sfreddo, 1998; Shapiro and Stelcner, 1997) and on the value of bilingualism among individuals in the United States, many of whom are not native English speakers (Fry and Powell, 2003). To the extent that English has become the lingua franca for international exchange, its labor market value is likely to .