English skills are highly valuable for today’s immigrants, but has this always been the case? I estimate the premium for English fluency and the rate of language acquisition in the early 20th century US using new linked data on over two hundred thousand immigrants. Few early 20th century immigrants arrived with English proficiency, yet many acquired language skills rapidly after arrival. Based on individual fixed effects, acquiring English fluency was associated with a small upgrade in occupational income. The results suggest that English fluency was less important for economic assimilation in the early 20th century than in recent decades.
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Zachary Ward (2019) studied this question.
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