英语人力资本与员工工资——来自2015年“中国企业—员工匹配调查”的经验证据

English Human Capital and Employees' Wage:Empirical evidence from 2015 China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES)

语言经济学的经验证据表明,语言能力作为一种重要的人力资本能为劳动力带来经济上的回报。相关研究较多地关注发达国家和地区的移民群体,对发展中国家劳动力的研究则不多见。对于我国这样一个实行单语政策的发展中大国,探讨员工外语能力的工资回报具有重要的现实意义,但由于国内相关文献数据的滞后性,分析结果不能较好地反映我国当下的实情。文章基于2015年"中国企业—员工匹配调查"(CEES)的最新一手数据,在Mincer方程的基础上控制了企业层面可观测和不可观测的因素,采用普通最小二乘法(OLS)、工具变量法(IV)、倾向得分匹配(PSM)等识别策略,实证分析发现英语综合能力、听说能力和阅读能力对员工小时工资都具有显著的正向因果效应。平均而言,具备英语综合能力、听说能力与阅读能力的员工的工资分别高出不具备这些能力的员工14.6%-18.6%、20.5%-27.9%和25.9%-35.8%。基于此,文章建议:重视对商务英语职业培训的投资,培养员工跨文化交际能力和英语交流能力;协调好英语教育改革中通用英语(EGP)和专门用途英语(ESP)的关系,着重提高学生的综合语言运用能力;适当减少高校英语必修课中的纯语言学教育,鼓励高等学校尤其是高等职业技术学校发展专门用途英语教育。

Empirical evidences from economics of language manifest that language skill, as a crucial form of human capital, will bring economic return to labor force. The majority of related researches have paid attention to migrants in developed countries, whereas scant studies have based their context on labor force in developing countries. It is of great practical implication to delve into wage return to English proficiency of employees in China,a large developing country under the monolingual policy. Yet due to time-lag of data,empirical results of domestic literature on this topic may fail to reflect the latest condition sufficiently. Based on latest, first-hand data from China Employer-Employee Survey （CEES） in 2015,this paper controls the observable and unobservable factors at a firm level, by using multiple methods to measure the effect of English human capital on hourly wage of employees. With OLS, IV and PSM, it empirically identifies the significantly positive causal effect of English comprehensive ability, English listening and speaking and English reading on employees＇ wage. On average, hourly wage of employees with English comprehensive ability, English listening and speaking and English reading is 14.6%- 18.6a%, 20.5%- 27.9 % and 25.9 %- 35.8 % ,higher than hourly wage of those without such abilities. It is proposed to increase investment in vocational training of business English, balance English for General Purpose and English for Special Purpose in reform of English education and encourage institutes of higher education to develop ESP which pays more attention to instrumental ap plication of English language.