An Interview with Dr. Nishith Prakash
Language chauvinism is rampant in Indian political circles – be it Hindi, Marathi or Tamil – and some politicians have even called for a ban on the use of English on the ground that it’s “elitist” (they probably don’t speak it well enough and are too lazy to learn it). However, a path-breaking new research study by a team of developmental economists has established that English-language proficiency among Indian workers leads to higher hourly wage earnings (although this is obviously not true for their “leaders”).
The research conducted by Dr. Nishith Prakash, post-doctoral research associate at Charles H. Dyson School of App and Economics and Management at Cornell University and research fellow at the Institute for Study of Labor in Bonn/Germany; Dr. Mehtabul Azam at the World Bank: and Dr. Aimee Chin at the University of Houston, quantify for the first time in an Indian context, the returns of English-language skills.
The findings have serious implications for language proficiency in a linguistically diverse country like India, says Dr. Prakash. Read the interview below to find out how you can profit from learning English or any other language:
Is English language proficiency a passport to higher earnings?
Our study established that English Language proficiency leads to higher earnings. Men who speak fluent English earn, on average, 34% higher hourly wages than those who speak no English: even workers who speak a little English earn 13% more.
Why are these findings in the Indian context significant?
A big part of labor economics is “returns to education”. That is the understanding that the more educated you are, the higher your earning potential is. We added an additional layer, language proficiency, and estimated the rewards from that in the Indian context. And for the first time, we’ve established clearly that there are significant returns for workers who speak English – and we’ve quantified it! This has implications for Language Proficiency in a linguistically diverse country like India. Knowing the return to English would help individuals and policy makers make decisions about how much to invest in English skills. Language skills are costly to acquire, and it’s difficult to make optimal choices without knowing the expected benefits.
How do you reconcile your findings with the fact that English isn’t the dominant language in India?
It’s true, according to the 2001 Census, that English is only 44th on the list of languages in India with most native speakers. Only 0.2% of the Indian population reported English as their mother tongue, but considerably more know it as a second or third language. In urban locations, about 35% speak English with some level of proficiency; among the 18-35 age group, about 25% speak English. Among graduates with more than 15 years of schooling, more than 88% speak English. That’s a pretty big number.
Do women enjoy a wage premium if they are proficient in English?
What we’ve seen is that women who have English ability enjoy 22% higher wages than women who don’t; the premium is less than for men. In urban areas, the wage premium that English proficiency women enjoy is pretty large. This may be accounted for by density of employers and the fact that given the demand-and-supply equation, women with certain skills, being fewer in number, can enjoy wage premiums.
(Source: DNA Bangalore, 21st August 2010)
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