Does geographical exposure to language learning centres affect language skills and labour market outcomes in a bilingual city?

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effects of geographical exposure to local language training centres in a bilingual urban labour market, the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, exploiting the implementation of a language policy that provided publicly subsidized language courses for adults. Our variable of interest consists in a measure of spatial availability of language schools that captures potential exposure and its expansion over time. First, we focus on the formation of local language skills, adopting a reduced-form approach. Our results indicate that exposure to language learning opportunities has a positive but quantitatively modest effect on local language skills, since individuals residing in neighbourhoods with a higher supply of language centres are more likely to be able to speak and write in Catalan. The effect is very robust to falsification exercises and several sensitivity checks and is driven by younger individuals, and especially by those who were born in Catalonia. Second, we analyse whether accessibility to language centres also affects employment, working hours, employment sector, and occupation. Our results indicate that, although skills in Catalan are positively and significantly associated with improved labour market outcomes, spatial accessibility to language centres is not directly related to any of them. This lack of effect is possibly due to the fact that the impact of geographical exposure on language skills is too small in size to improve performance in the local labour market.