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Wage Returns to English Proficiency in Poland

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Abstract

We investigate the effect of English language proficiency on the wages of native full-time employees in Poland. Using a unique data set with information on over 600,000 survey respondents polled over the five-year period from 2013 to 2017, we employ an IV approach founded on a natural experiment - namely, the reform of foreign language instruction in Polish schools. Our preferred estimates indicate that monthly wages for those individuals with ‘good’ or ‘very good’ knowledge of English exceeded the wages of those with ‘no English’ (or those with just a conversational proficiency) by nearly 60% for men and more than 50% for women. The estimates are statistically significant for both genders, and suggest quantitatively relevant wage returns for proficiency in English.

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Notes

  1. For an extensive bibliography of literature in language economics, the reader is referred to Gazzola et al. (2016).

  2. DiNardo and Pischke (1997) point out that inferences based on ‘usage at work’ of some tools (i.e., skills) can be misleading if one wants to measure their effect on wages. Grin (2003, pp. 19-20) also states that language use is a fairly vague and unreliable definition of language competence.

  3. http://www.coe.int/en/web/portfolio/self-assessment-grid

  4. There is also some evidence that self-evaluations may be a generally reliable way of measuring the level of language skills. Oscarson (1984), Blanche and Merino (1989) and Ross (1998) all conclude that self-assessments are highly correlated with the outcomes from formal tests of language ability. In a more recent study, Dragemark Oscarson (2009) reports the results from the Swedish National Evaluation where correlations between self-assessed and formal scores were high (about 0.7) and where 85% of students received the score they had estimated.

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Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous referees and the editor for their very helpful contributions to two major revisions of this paper. The authors are listed in alphabetical order and all contributed equally to the research reported here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Houston –Victoria, Victoria, TX, USA

    Vera A. Adamchik

  2. Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

    Thomas J. Hyclak & Larry W. Taylor

  3. Cracow University of Economics, Kraków, Poland

    Piotr Sedlak

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  1. Vera A. Adamchik
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  2. Thomas J. Hyclak
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  4. Larry W. Taylor
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Correspondence to Thomas J. Hyclak.

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Adamchik, V.A., Hyclak, T.J., Sedlak, P. et al. Wage Returns to English Proficiency in Poland. J Labor Res 40, 276–295 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-019-09291-2

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