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    A 2002 study "The returns to speaking a second language" by Saiz and Zoido http://www.phil.frb.org/research-and-data/publications/working-papers/2002/wp02-16.pdf found that learning German boosts earnings more than learning French or Spanish, because the supply of people who know German is small relative to the demand for them.

    http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/03/language-study
    Johnson: What is a foreign language worth?
    The Economist
    Mar 11th 2014

    Quote
    Second, Albert Saiz, the MIT economist who calculated the 2% premium, found quite different premiums for different languages: just 1.5% for Spanish, 2.3% for French and 3.8% for German. This translates into big differences in the language account: your Spanish is worth $51,000, but French, $77,000, and German, $128,000. Humans are famously bad at weighting the future against the present, but if you dangled even a post-dated $128,000 cheque in front of the average 14-year-old, Goethe and Schiller would be hotter than Facebook.

    Why do the languages offer such different returns? It has nothing to do with the inherent qualities of Spanish, of course. The obvious answer is the interplay of supply and demand. This chart reckons that Spanish-speakers account for a bit more of world GDP than German-speakers do. But an important factor is economic openness. Germany is a trade powerhouse, so its language will be more economically valuable for an outsider than the language of a relatively more closed economy.

    But in American context (the one Mr Saiz studied), the more important factor is probably supply, not demand, of speakers of a given language. Non-Latino Americans might study Spanish because they hear and see so much of it spoken in their country. But that might be the best reason not to study the language, from a purely economic point of view. A non-native learner of Spanish will have a hard time competing with a fluent native bilingual for a job requiring both languages. Indeed, Mr Saiz found worse returns for Spanish study in states with a larger share of Hispanics. Better to learn a language in high demand, but short supply—one reason, no doubt, ambitious American parents are steering their children towards Mandarin. The drop-off in recent years in the American study of German might be another reason for young people to hit the Bücher.

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    Goethe and Schiller would be hotter than Facebook

    Sadly,this particular calculus doesn't even seem to be true for MY fourteen-year-old. And she's pretty fond of Goethe, all things considered.

    grin


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    learning German boosts earnings more than learning French or Spanish
    This may be true overall, but it doesn't take into account how language will affect earnings by field. They averaged everything together. In the world of finance or international trade, German might boost your earnings. But if you want to go into anything human-services related, Spanish (in the U.S.) will make you a much more desirable hire, while German will get you squat.

    The paper attempted to control for this, but failed in two ways. First (and less serious), they used college major as a proxy for career choice, which is a very inaccurate measure. Second and more important, they merely used that information to adjust the statistics to eliminate it as a source of bias in their results, but they still were lumping everyone together. When you average everyone together, German is buying somebody enough more that it pulls the whole statistic in favor of German.

    Instead, they should have been looking by career category. (In the language of my biz, they should have been looking for simple effects instead of a main effect, because there are probably some serious cross-over interactions going on here.)

    TL;DR -- If you want to practice medicine in New Mexico, take Spanish not German.

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    Originally Posted by MegMeg
    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    learning German boosts earnings more than learning French or Spanish
    This may be true overall, but it doesn't take into account how language will affect earnings by field. They averaged everything together. In the world of finance or international trade, German might boost your earnings. But if you want to go into anything human-services related, Spanish (in the U.S.) will make you a much more desirable hire, while German will get you squat.

    The paper attempted to control for this, but failed in two ways. First (and less serious), they used college major as a proxy for career choice, which is a very inaccurate measure. Second and more important, they merely used that information to adjust the statistics to eliminate it as a source of bias in their results, but they still were lumping everyone together. When you average everyone together, German is buying somebody enough more that it pulls the whole statistic in favor of German.

    Instead, they should have been looking by career category. (In the language of my biz, they should have been looking for simple effects instead of a main effect, because there are probably some serious cross-over interactions going on here.)

    TL;DR -- If you want to practice medicine in New Mexico, take Spanish not German.

    TL;DR -- I think you are just jealous of my previously demonstrated profound giftedness in the (admittedly narrow) field of European language economics.

    Last edited by JonLaw; 04/08/14 07:07 AM. Reason: I may have used the wrong word. It could be "envy" and not "jealousy". I get those two confused.
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    Broad studies are useless in determining individual outcomes.

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    Originally Posted by Dude
    Broad studies are useless in determining individual outcomes.

    You are harshing my mellow here.

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    You guys crack me up!

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    Originally Posted by JonLaw
    Originally Posted by Dude
    Broad studies are useless in determining individual outcomes.

    You are harshing my mellow here.

    If you can say that in German, you get $128k.

    You get it in the form of a "cheque," whatever that is. I'm not familiar with that particular language.

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    It's like a gift.

    Well, like a gift in English, anyway. Not so much like das gift would be in Deutsch. Though I suppose that it's fair to note that there could be some interesting metaphorical dimension to that particular pseudo-cognate pair...

    Falsche Freunde indeed. grin


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Being from Canada, I took French. I went to Wall Street and traveled around the world. Japanese would have been particularly useful. The only time I used French in France was to yell at my limo driver when he got lost on the way to Renault and asked him for the map. When I was traveling around S America talking to investors, they all spoke English, but Spanish would have good to know.
    German is always good, if you need to look at documents. Germans speak English. French is good to read a menu in an expensive restaurant.
    My view is what do you want to do with it? If business is the end goal, Spanish covers a lot of countries. German because most of Europe may collapse before we get through this mess. French because you can be pretentious.
    This is from someone who took French and wishes they had not.

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