Unified Language, Labor and Ideology*

Unified Language, Labor and Ideology* Yang You Harvard University Last Updated: Feb. 2018 Abstract Exploring an instance of nationwide language educational reform, the Chinese Pinyin Act Reform of 1958-1960, we estimate the effects of language unification using a difference-in-difference approach by interacting a birth cohort exposure dummy with the linguistic distances between local languages and Putonghua, modern standardized Mandarin. This paper presents five main findings: (1) Putonghua learning exhibits modest short-run negative but long-run positive effects on educational attainment; (2) Putonghua learning increases rural households’ non-agricultural employment; (3) Common language empowers workers to migrate across provinces and language regions; (4) Language unification fosters patriotism, a stronger national identity and a more positive subjective evaluation of China. One plausible channel is that the common language builds national identity by expanding exposure to vocal-based media, namely radio, cell phone and internet; and (5) The post-reform population shows more skepticism of democracy, better subjective evaluation of governance and more support for government intervention over economic liberalism. These changes in ideology and social preference are consistent with the political doctrine of the Communist Party of China. Keywords: Language, Education, Labor market, Ideology, Social Preference JEL Code: I25, I26, L82, N45, O15, Z13 * We thank Michael Kremer for outstanding guidance and support. We are grateful Alberto Alesina, Philipp Ager, Richard Freeman, Edward Glaeser, Lawrence Katz, Andrei Shleifer, Stefanie Stantcheva and seminar participants at the Harvard Development Economics lunch seminar, the Economic History lunch seminar, the Public/Labor lunch seminar, the China Economy Seminar and The Econometric Society Asian Meeting 2017, for their comments and helpful discussions. Siwei Vivian Xu and Ying Liu provided excellent research assistance. 1 1. Introduction This paper studies the causal impact of learning in a unified national language, rather than a local language, on education, labor market outcomes, ideology, and social preferences by exploring the Chinese Pinyin Education Act enacted in 1958. Although written Chinese is the same across China, the local spoken languages (dialects) can be so different across China that people cannot understand each other. The language education reform unifies spoken languages by shifting the language pedagogy from “learning by character” to “learning by pronunciation” using Pinyin. To identify the language effects, we explore variation in computational linguistic distance from the local dialect to Putonghua (Zheng 1994): people native in linguistically distant (close) dialects expose to a larger (smaller) language unification shock; for example, Beijing Mandarin speakers are not affected by the Pinyin Act since Pinyin is precisely how their parents and neighbors speak; however, Cantonese speakers technically have to learn a new language while they are in school because Putonghua is so different from Cantonese. In the baseline, we study the impact of learning a new language for the non-Putonghua speakers. We generate a birth cohort exposure dummy1 based on the effective years of exposure to the Pinyin Act and use a difference-in-difference approach to estimate language effects by interacting the birth cohort exposure dummy with linguistic distance. This paper documents results in three categories: First, Educational Attainment. One particular concern is that compulsory new language learning discourages students from education. In the Chinese context, we find evidence that new language very modestly deters students from schooling in the first five birth cohorts but encourages primary school enrollment in the long-run. However, the dynamic is weak in both economic scale and statistical power. 1 We assume students start primary school at the age of seven. The Compulsory Schooling Law explicitly specified that children should enroll in primary schools between age six and age seven. For example, the Pinyin Act was effective in 1960 for Jilin Province. Then we assume that the birth cohort of 1953 is treated while the birth cohort of 1952 is not treated. In rural areas, children may start school at the age of eight or later. 2 Second, Labor Market and Migration. According to the Population Census Survey in 2000, rural residents are more likely to earn a non-agricultural employment, with a 10% increase in the linguistic distance corresponding to a 0.62% higher non-agricultural participation in the 20 post-reform birth cohorts. Using the same identification approach, we find that language unification increases the migration across provinces and language areas, but reduces migration within provinces. These findings imply that a unified language enables workers to communicate and collaborate at the workplace more easily and lowers the cost of migration. Third, Nation Building, Ideology and Social Preference: Language unification also unifies peoples’ mindsets. Speaking a common language nurtures patriotism, strengthens national identity and weakens local identity. To investigate the mechanism, we find that media may play an important role: people are inclined to follow political news more avidly and use more vocal-based devices, e.g., radios and cell phones, but not text-based media, e.g., newspapers. Consistent with the Chinese government doctrine, people believe that the Chinese government is more democratic and its governance is better. Also, people express more skepticism towards the importance of democracy and develop stronger socialist preferences. We hypothesize that the common language increases information availability for non-Putonghua speakers, thus increasing their exposure to the ideological doctrine broadcasted by the media under government control. Language unification plays an important role in unifying ideologies across China and building a more united country. The paper investigates language unification with broad implications in many countries both historically and contemporarily. Language matters in some recent disputes: U.S. President Donald Trump took down the Spanish White House pages and catalyzed debate about whether the United States should implement an English-only policy, despite the fact that 17.6% population of the nation is Hispanic and Latino. In Spain, Catalan speakers fought for an independent Republic of Catalonia in the Catalan Independence Referendum of 2017. Historically, language unification typically happened simultaneously with state formation. In France, Weber 3 (1976) emphasized that linguistic conversion to French was a crucial causal factor in developing the unity of minds, and French-speaking education was important to achieve nation integration. Similarly, today’s Italian was only known to less than 3% of the population when Italian unification began in 1861. Long after state formation, the standard Italian, co-existing with diverse dialects, gradually spread over Italy and was ultimately approved as the official language by Italian Parliament in 2007. Some recent trends also contribute to the growing importance of understanding language effects: globalization requires English fluency, as it is the dominant language in international trades; Syrian refugees relocate to countries speaking different languages. Many other countries2 are experiencing or have experienced language unification to some extent. We study the effects of language unification in the Chinese context with a natural experiment. This paper contributes to several strands of the literature. The primary focus in literature is to measure the labor market returns3. This paper documents that learning Putonghua helps rural peasants shift to non-agricultural sectors for better job opportunities. Another related strand of literature evaluates the impact of learning in a mother tongue (Kit-Ken 1994, Sridhar 1996, Yip et al. 2003, Grin 2006, Seid 2016). This paper first shows the short-run negative but long-run positive dynamics of a new language on educational attainment. This paper also contributes to the more recent literature on how language shapes migration (Isphording and Otten 2003, Falck et al. 2012, Adsera and Pytlikova 2015), cultural transmission (Lazear 1999, Fouka 2016) and economic preferences (Bleakley and Chin 2010, Falk et al. 2016). The remainder of the paper is organized as follows . In Section 2, We discuss the background of language diversity in China and the Pinyin Act reform from 2 US (Lazear 1999, Saiz and Zoido 2005, Dustmann and Soest 2001), UK (Dustmann and Fabbri 2003), Canada (Carliner 1981, Chiswick and Miller 2001), Singapore (Kit-Ken 1994), Luxembourg (Fehlen 2002) and other EU Countries (Eurobarometer 2006) China (Zhou and Sun 2006), India (Sridhar 1996, Clingingsmith 2014), Chad (Thierry et al. 2016), Ethiopia (Seid 2016) and other African countries (Phillipson 1996, Banda 2000, Phillipson 2009) 3 Marschak (1965), Carliner (1981), Chiswick and Miller (1995), Angrist and Lavy (1997), Dustmann and Soest (2001), Dustmann and Fabbri (2003), Hellerstein and Neumark (2003), Bleakley and Chin (2004), Saiz and Zoido (2005), Grin (2006), Banerjee et al. (2007), Gao and Smyth (2011), Chiswick and Miller (2012), Rickford et al. (2015) 4 1958-1960. Section 3 describes the data and empirical identification strategy. Section 4 verifies Putonghua proficiency improvement in post-reform cohorts and documents its impacts on educational attainment. Section

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