China is a good place to study the return to education and social scientists have been at it for some time. Researchers M. Niaz Asadullah and Saixi Xiao, both affiliated with the University of Malaya but writing in a Working Paper for the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, count 68-such studies from 1987 to 2016.
Much of the work highlights the surprisingly poor payoff to workers from education in the early part of China’s reform and opening up in the 1980’s and early ’90s; but things have subsequently improved.
Where this survey adds to existing work is highlighting how the biggest gains have come most recently and especially how valuable English skills have become. The bottom line is workers with good English skill command a 30% premium for their services over linguistically-challenged peers; and that should be a very powerful incentive.
What the paper doesn’t flag is what might happen to that premium if English proficiency becomes the norm in China? Based on my none too scientific experience however I’d say that day is some way off.
You can access the paper in full via the following link English Premium.
Happy Sunday.