Language Skills, Income and Employment

Short Description: This SOEP-IS module is concerned with the investigation of the relationship between foreign language skills and labour market outcomes, in particular income and employment status. The dataset includes information not only on the languages known by respondents, but also their level of proficiency, and the factors that contributed to language acquisition.

Methodological Details: Various self-report items with response options for over 50 languages. Participants were asked which of these languages they would consider their first language(s) and which other language(s) they have learned in their life so far. Examples of follow-up questions include “Why did you start to learn this language?”, “How confident are you with each of the following actions using this language?”, and “In which of the following countries have you lived for at least six months?”

Available Papers:

Gazzola, Michele, Sabrina Hahm, and Bengt-Arne Wickström. 2018. Sind Fremd-sprachenkenntnisse mit dem Einkommen und der Beschäftigung verbunden? Empirische Evidenz aus Deutschland und aus der Welt. In Cyril Robert Brosch, and Sabine Fiedler (eds.), Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik 2018 , 55-77. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag.

Contact	Year	Respondents	Dataset	Variables	Availability	Field	Method
Bengt-Arne Wickström, Humboldt University of Berlin [E-Mail]	2013	~1000	ilanguage	isk03, spra1, isk10a, spra23, isk12, spra22, isk06_1, im_sk, isk09, isk06_6, isk12a, isk01, isk07, spra24, spra21, spra25, isk02a_2, spra3, isk06_5, spra4, isk02a_1, isk06_ka, isk06_3, isk06_8, spra2ka, isk13_land4, isk06_4, isk05, sk_id, isk13_land2, isk13_land6, isk06_9, isk13_land1, isk13_land5, isk06_7, isk02, isk14, im_lngj, isk11, isk13_land3, isk10, isk06_2	04/2019	Linguistics	Survey items