The impact of language proficiency on welfare

Since early years of independence, Kazakhstan has been implementing the language policy of trilingual education, which views three languages: Kazakh, Russian, and English, as the basis of societal cohesion and economic development (Law on languages, 1997). Each of the languages has its own role: Kazakh should be considered as a language of national identity. Russian should be treated as a language of inter-ethnic communication given the legacy of the Soviet Union, where Russian was the state language and the majority of the population, including the citizens of modern Kazakhstan, spoke Russian.  English should operate as an international language, providing access to the country to the global market (“The development and functioning of languages in the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2011-2020”, 2010). The challenge of this policy implementation is because people have various levels of linguistic proficiency and this might influence the economy of the country as well.

The data from Forbes Insights (2010), delivers that the minority language speakers are more likely to face socio-economic inequality in comparison to the dominant language speakers. The author shows the example of Canada, where Anglophone males were more privileged than Francophone males. The discrepancy of the income of these two ethnic groups was 35%. Thus, it is obvious that the language plays a significant role in human economic welfare. The knowledge of two and more languages provides news opportunities for people and increases income level as well. Linguistic skills are considered to be an enormous contribution to the competitiveness in the labor market. The examples of discrimination people faced when the high valuable languages as: English, French, German and etc. were obligatory languages at workplace. Bilinguals have a wider range of better paid employment opportunities as it was mentioned in the “Forbes insights”. It was stressed that the widespread usage of English among all employees marginalizes the potential monolingual staff to compete the same way in the globalized environment. Forbes Insights (2010) found out that high language proficiency advance the potential of workers. The lack of language skills compromise productivity and management skills. The survey shows that 93% expatriate managers are more successful when they possess two and more languages.

The international company Education First provided a standardized measurement of adults’ English language proficiency within Asian and European countries, so the research shows that the grater proficiency in English language leads to higher income. Unfortunately, Kazakhstan belongs to the country with “low level proficiency”.  To sum up, the high proficiency of languages could guarantee the better employment and income opportunities.

References:

English proficiency contributes to higher income levels (2012), Retrieved April 19, 2015 from http://www.nationmultimedia.com/aec/English-proficiency-contributes-to-higher-income-l-30187905.html

Kazakhstan. The Ministry of Education and Science (1997). “Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Languages” Retrieved November 1, from <http//www.edu.gov.kz/en>

Kazakhstan. The Ministry of Education and Science (2010). “The development and functioning of languages in the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2011-2020”Astana: the Ministry of Education and Science. Retrieved November 2, from <http//www.edu.gov.kz/en>

Reducing the Impact of language Barriers (2010), Retrieved April 17, 2015 from  ttp://resources.rosettastone.com/CDN/us/pdfs/Biz-Public-Sec/Forbes-Insights-Reducing-the-Impact-of-Language-Barriers.pdf