Effects English-Language Skills-Children of Immigrants

影响移民子女的英语语言技能

• 批准号: 7012465
• 负责人: AIMEE CHIN
• 金额: $ 7.43万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-07-01 至 2008-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7012465
• 关键词: United States; academic achievement; behavioral /social science research tag; child psychology; children; clinical research; developmental psychology; family structure /dynamics; fertility; human data; human population study; immigrant; language development; marriage /marital status; nonEnglish language; parent offspring interaction; psychometrics; socioeconomics; socioenvironment; verbal learning; vocabulary

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There are 13.5 million children of immigrants in the U.S., which accounts for nearly one-fifth of our nation's children and a disproportionate share of our nation's children in poverty. These children are at greater risk to drop out of high school and therefore realize worse economic outcomes. The schooling gap between the children of immigrants and native Whites appears to be linked to English proficiency. Unfortunately, since language human capital is endogenous, simple correlations of English proficiency and socioeconomic outcomes are unlikely to measure the causal effect of English proficiency. We take advantage of the psychobiological phenomenon that younger children learn languages more easily than older children to construct an instrumental variable for language human capital. We use instrumental-variables estimation to examine two main research questions. First, what is the effect of parents' English-language skills on children's language and educational outcomes? Second, to better understand the family environment in which the children of immigrants are growing up, what is the effect of English-language skills on the marriage, childbearing and location decisions of immigrants? We employ micro-data from the 2000 Census. Preliminary analysis reveals a powerful association between age at arrival and the English proficiency of individuals who immigrated during childhood. Regarding the first question, we find that immigrant parents' English proficiency has a positive effect on U.S.-born children's English proficiency while the children are still young. Also, children with parents with lower English proficiency are more likely to drop out of high school and not attend preschool. Regarding the second question, we find that higher English proficiency has no impact on the probability of ever marrying but raises the probability of divorce. Also, it does not change the probability of having at least one child but raises the number of children. The significance of the proposed research is that it will increase our understanding of the role of English in immigrant assimilation in the U.S. Knowledge gained will help us design policies that improve the conditions under which the children of immigrants grow up and that raise their well-being in adulthood. Psychobiological constraints on how humans acquire new languages may be preventing some immigrants from developing adequate English skills. Interventions can prevent the parents' disadvantages from being transmitted to the children.

描述（由申请人提供）：美国有1350万移民的儿童，占我们国家子女的近五分之一，在贫困中占我们国家子女的比例不成比例。这些孩子有辍学的风险更大，因此实现了更糟糕的经济成果。移民和当地白人的孩子之间的教学差距似乎与英语水平有关。不幸的是，由于语言人力资本是内源性的，因此英语水平和社会经济成果的简单相关性不太可能衡量英语水平的因果关系。我们利用了与年龄较大的孩子更容易学到语言的心理生物学现象，以构建语言人力资本的工具变量。我们使用仪器变量估算来检查两个主要的研究问题。首先，父母的英语技能对孩子的语言和教育成果有何影响？其次，为了更好地了解移民成长的孩子的家庭环境，英语技能对婚姻，生育和移民的位置决定的影响是什么？我们从2000年人口普查中采用微数据。初步分析表明，到达年龄与童年移民的个人的英语水平之间有着强大的联系。关于第一个问题，我们发现移民父母的英语能力对孩子们还年轻的时候对美国出生的儿童的英语水平产生积极影响。此外，具有较低英语水平的父母的孩子更有可能辍学，而不是上学前班。关于第二个问题，我们发现较高的英语能力对结婚的可能性没有影响，但提高了离婚的可能性。同样，它不会改变至少有一个孩子的可能性，而是会增加儿童人数。拟议的研究的意义在于，它将提高我们对英语在移民同化在美国知识中的作用的理解将有助于我们设计政策，以改善移民子女成长的条件，并在成年后提高他们的福祉。关于人类如何获取新语言的心理生物学限制可能会阻止某些移民发展足够的英语技能。干预措施可以防止父母的缺点传播给孩子。