English Proficiency and Social Assimilation Among Immigrants : An Instrumental - Variables Approach *

Using 2000 Census microdata on childhood immigrants, we relate familyformation variables to their age at arrival in the United States, and in particular whether that age fell within the “critical period” of language acquisition. We interpret the observed differences as an effect of English-language skills and construct an instrumental variable for English-language proficiency. Two-stageleast-squares estimates suggest that English proficiency raises the probabilities of marrying a native, being divorced, or having a high-earning and/or more educated spouse, and reduces the number of children. (JEL J12, J13, J15, J24) * Bleakley: Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, 5807 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL, 60637 (email: [email protected]); Chin: Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Houston, 204 McElhinney Hall, Houston, TX 77204-5019 (email: [email protected]). We thank Chinhui Juhn for helpful comments and discussion. We also thank Mevlude Akbulut for excellent research assistance. Financial support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R03HD051562) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors bear sole responsibility for the content of this paper.