Roberts, Stephen John2024-08-152024-08-1519921992https://hdl.handle.net/1828/19478As a nation which has official bilingualism entrenched in its constitution, Canada faces some very complex problems based upon language differences. These problems are not only social problems, but are also very much economic problems. Because economic power is concentrated in the hands of Anglophones, and because English is the predominant language of the Canadian workplace, there is speculation that there may be differentials in earnings between Anglophones and other linguistic groups. In addition to this, there is evidence that government sector workers enjoy a wage premium over private sector workers. It is the purpose of this thesis to identify this and other sources of wage differentials between language groups in Canada as well as its sub-regions of English Canada, Quebec, and Montreal with emphasis on returns to language skills. The method used to meet this objective is to employ a human capital model to estimate the contribution of language and other human capital characteristics to earned wages. In addition to this, econometric methods are used to control for the possibility of sample selection bias. Eight language groups are defined and the model is estimated for four geographic areas. The data are taken from the 1986 Canadian Census and include only employed, wage earning males. Results reveal a large sectoral difference in monetary returns to language skills. That is, the public sector is found to reward bilingualism, while the private sector does not. Furthermore, in the public sector, learning French as a second language yields greater returns than does learning English as a second language. In the private sector there is a clear advantage to learning English as a second language. In addition to this, strong regional differences are found. In particular, the effects on wages of possessing language skills other than English are much stronger - in the public sector that is, - in the Quebec and Montreal samples. Sample selection variables are found to be significant only for public sector workers and for the English Canada sample. The results suggest that self selection occurs and, on average, has a positive influence on wages.126 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebUN SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic GrowthThesis