Bilingualism and Status Attainment among Latinos

Abstract

Recent research demonstrates that bilingualism is associated with positive educational outcomes. Less is known, however, about its influence on status attainment in young adulthood. In this study, we utilize data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 2000 to examine the influence of bilingualism during adolescence on educational attainment, occupation, and income among Latinos. We find that compared with English dominance, biliteracy is positively associated with high school completion and occupational prestige among Latina women and that oral and passive bilingualism are negatively associated with high school completion among Latino men. We suggest these differences reflect the gendered experiences of language. Spanish-speaking men may be stigmatized, whereas biliterate women may gain valuable skills that are rewarded in school and in the labor market.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was conducted with the support of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the agencies. This article benefited from useful feedback given by Weihua An, Jessica Calarco, Youngjoo Cha, Joshua Klugman, Shawna Rohrman, Catherine Taylor, and four anonymous reviewers.

Notes

Notes

¹ Although the association could be due to the selectivity of individuals who are fluently bilingual (i.e., those with greater cognitive ability may be more likely to be bilingual), Hakuta and Diaz (1985) conclude that this is not the case. In their test of two alternative models of the direction of causality for the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive ability, they find greater support for the claim that bilingualism is the causal link as opposed to the reverse.

² There has also been some research on the value of bilingualism among the general U.S. population. For instance, Saiz and Zoido (2005) find a modest earnings premium (2 to 3 percent) among bilingual college graduates when compared with their peers who only speak English.

³ While the U.S. Census does not recognize “Latino” as constituting a separate racial group, research suggests that Latinos may be treated as a racial category because in addition to seeing themselves as members of separate racial group, Latinos are treated by U.S. legislation as a distinctive group (Lee and Bean 2004). Further, Golash-Boza (2006) argues that like members of other racial groups (e.g., Asians and blacks), individuals are labeled as “Hispanic” or “Latino” according to phenotypical characteristics and tend to be discriminated against according to those labels.

⁴ We also examined educational attainment as a four-category variable indicating whether the respondent completed less than high school, high school/GED, some college, or college or more. Results indicated that bilingualism did not distinguish between the various levels of postsecondary education, and instead only significantly influenced the odds of completing high school or more. Therefore, for parsimony and ease of interpretation, we present the results for high school completion or higher.

⁵ Analyses of annual income were also conducted and yielded similar results. The results are available upon request.

⁶ Predicted probabilities are calculated using sample means/proportions for all control variables.

⁷ The BIC statistic for model 2 is actually larger than the BIC for model 1, suggesting that model 1 is actually a better fitting model. However, BIC statistics are sensitive to the number of variables and tends to favor more parsimonious models (Raftery 1995), and a Wald test showed that the joint contribution of the interactions between gender and the language categories was statistically significant (chi-square = 9.79, 4 df; p = 0.04). Thus, we believe it would be wrong to ignore the significant interaction between bilingual proficiency and gender and conclude that there is no gender difference in the relationship between bilingualism and occupational prestige.