The 10 Languages With the Most Economic Benefits

Most Economic Benefits

In the digital age, knowing more than one language can be a valuable asset in your career, especially if you’re in a business that relies on trade or global commerce. Countries understand the importance of educational attainment to the economy since, by logic, more years of schooling mean a more highly educated and productive workforce, which leads to increased output of goods and services and, eventually, a more robust economy because of educational attainment (Barro & Lee, 2001).

As a result, bilingualism appears to make people bicultural (or multicultural, if they speak more than two languages), a significant advantage in today’s borderless world, and a vital skill when traveling and meeting new people. Many companies require their employees to know another language or language skills to rise through the ranks, and bilingual workers get paid nearly 20% more than non-bilingual workers. But there are even more reasons to learn languages other than English; these ten languages with the most economic benefits are just some of them.

1. English

While its origin may lie in England, English is now spoken in over 50 countries—and as a result, it’s commonly used as a lingua franca to aid international communication. That said, unless you’re an American living abroad, learning English will be much more economically beneficial for you than for an overseas counterpart. In fact, learning any foreign language will open doors for you—as long as it’s a significant tongue like Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. With about a billion non-native English speakers worldwide, English has the most considerable number of second-language speakers. When it comes to second languages, English reigns supreme, with over 750 million speakers, accounting for the vast majority of English speakers worldwide. The strength of English has both positive and negative effects.

2. Spanish

One of the top ten languages to learn, Spanish is spoken by over 400 million people worldwide. Although some may assume that it will only be helpful in a Latin-American setting, Spanish has great international significance. The United States and much of South America are two regions where Spanish is frequently used. Learning a second language can boost your creativity, mental health, and more!

3. Chinese

It’s no surprise that Chinese is one of the most common second (or third) languages in English-speaking countries. Not only does it have more than a billion native speakers, but it’s also spoken by populations across Asia, Africa, and South America. Due to its widespread use, learning Chinese opens doors to various career opportunities around the world. In addition to earning potential, learning Chinese can provide insight into another culture and may facilitate cross-cultural understanding between China and English-speaking countries.

4. French

While English has become a lingua franca around much of the world, learning French can still help you get ahead in international business. There are some twenty-five million native speakers in France and another hundred million people who speak it fluently as a second language. In addition to being one of Europe’s primary business languages, French is also an official language in more than twenty countries worldwide, including Canada, many African nations, and governments across South America.

5. German

German language learning can put you in touch with 120 million native speakers and a second-language community of millions more people. German is one of six official working languages of the United Nations and 23 official languages in the European Union. In addition to its importance in Europe, German is becoming more important as an international language: It’s widely taught at universities around Asia, including China and Japan, as well as South Korea. Language of Origin With 870 million native speakers, Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken native language globally. Brazil’s native language is Portuguese, which was brought to the country by Portuguese invaders.

6. Japanese

Japanese is a prime language to learn if you’re headed to Asia since it’s spoken by hundreds of millions of people on five different significant islands. Many students choose Japanese because it has no gender-specific nouns, making speaking easier for beginners. Since more than 90% of all documents in Japan are written in Japanese, knowing how to read and write even a few words will make life easier when you visit Tokyo or other locations in Japan.

7. Portuguese

Portuguese is spoken by about 200 million people worldwide, and there are also large Portuguese-speaking communities in Brazil and Portugal. If you want to learn Portuguese, you should know that it’s derived from Latin and has some commonalities with Spanish.

8. Russian

Russian is one of only six languages in which more than one billion people are fluent, according to a 2013 report from Ethnologue. The Russian language is also spoken in Israel, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (alongside their official state tongues), as well as by Russian minorities in neighboring countries. It’s no surprise that knowing Russian could help an aspiring global businessperson succeed—and it’s easy to pick up if you’re already familiar with Latin-based alphabetical systems like English or Spanish.

9. Arabic

The official language of more than 20 countries, Arabic is essential for understanding one of today’s fastest-growing economies. The sheer number of countries where it’s used—and its position in African and European politics—make it one of today’s must-learn foreign languages. With excellent GDP numbers, reaching out to the 400 million or more Arabic speaker has never been more crucial.

10. Korean

Korean is one of several language options you should consider when developing your foreign-language skill set. As of 2012, there were approximately 2.9 million native Korean speakers and a few million more who knew it as a second language.

We systematically examined health, gender, and economic literature using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) standards to find research that looked at the impact of women’s health on micro-and macroeconomic outcomes. For each study, the primary authors independently gathered information on pathways to economic return, type of study, setting (country and income level of the country), population studied, period, the aim of the study, study design and methods, main result, risk of bias, quality of the study, and strengths and limitations of the study.

Training of Immigrants

It also promotes investment in the education and training of immigrants that eventually pays off in the form of higher wages and output; grants access to a broader range of higher-paying jobs; encourages labor mobility which increases the returns on the labor skills of immigrants by improving the efficiency of the labor market such that the skillsets of immigrants more closely match the jobs that they perform, and makes it more possible for immigrants to start businesses and create jobs.

Tourism-dependent cities like Las Vegas and Orlando also tend to have larger Hispanic or Latino populations, while cities with below-average changes in unemployment like Seattle and Washington D.C. tend to have smaller Hispanic or Latino populations. These impacts compound existing racial inequity in health care access as the Hispanic or Latino population is also disproportionately likely to contract COVID-19.

To estimate the effect of citizenship on the earnings of unauthorized immigrants, we decompose the income effect of citizenship that we calculated for all noncitizens 16 percent into two components: one to estimate the percentage gain in income that the unauthorized experience as a consequence of attaining legal status and the other to calculate the percentage gain in revenue that they obtain from becoming naturalized citizens. Our estimate of the second component suggests that previously unauthorized and newly legalized immigrants would experience an additional 10 percent gain in income if they acquired citizenship.

Bernt Bratsberg, James Ragan, and Zafar Nasir In a 2002 longitudinal study, Bratsberg, Ragan, and Nasir followed a sample of 332 young male legal immigrants from 1979 through 1991 and found that citizenship was associated with a wage gain of around 5.6 percent. Hence, legalization and citizenship improve the efficiency of the labor market by ensuring that people are working in fields where their skillsets and training are being used to the fullest extent.

Economic Effects

The Economic Effects of Granting Legal Status and Citizenship to Undocumented Immigrants Permitting the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants to earn the privilege of citizenship will significantly expand economic growth, boost incomes, create jobs, and increase tax revenues. The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evidence from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets American Economic Review vol. 103, no. 2, April 2013 (pp. 690-731).

We understand “investments in women’s health” to mean interventions that relate to women’s health. In general, evidence providing economic justification for investments in women’s health tend to focus on reproductive health, investigating the implications of women’s reproductive rather than productive roles .

However, contextualized analysis that accounts for cultural factors is needed, as the status of women differs among and within countries [ Our study describes spillovers from investments in women’s health that are not covered in current cost-effectiveness analyses.

Studies indicate that household characteristics may explain poorer pregnancy outcomes for young mothers, but the degree of impact differs between settings. Studies from Canada and South Africa looked at long-term consequences for children born to teenage mothers, showing adverse effects on educational achievement, life satisfaction, and personal income later in life.

Effect of maternal obesity on neonatal death in sub-Saharan Africa: Multivariable analysis of 27 national datasets. Dynamics of educational attainment for orphaned children and adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Malawi.

Download Full-Text PDF Article Information JEL Classification D14 Personal Finance D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief E21 Macroeconomics: Consumption; Saving; Wealth I12 Health Production J26 Retirement; Retirement Policies Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification.

Effects from Citizenship

An additional income effect from citizenship would have occurred on top of the 15.1 percent income increase that followed legalization, implying that undocumented immigrants would have gained more than a 15.1 percent increase in their earnings from acquiring both legal status and the other benefits of citizenship. For a review of studies that have shown the additional income effect of citizenship,

Both proposals contained strong language regarding the need to provide legal status for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country, as well as a road map to full citizenship.

Others have expressed interest in stopping just short of providing full citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants instead of calling for a so-called middle-ground option to leave undocumented immigrants in a permanent sub-citizen status. Know what is immigration?

As discussed below, legal status and citizenship enable undocumented immigrants to produce and earn significantly more than they do when they are on the economic sidelines.

Under the first scenario in which undocumented immigrants are granted legal status and citizenship in 2013, U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, would grow by an additional $1.4 trillion cumulatively over the ten years between 2013 and 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated many existing inequalities, disproportionately affecting populations worldwide that were already suffering from poverty, illness, discrimination, institutional instability, or financial insecurity. Search the United Nations A-Z Site Index A centuries-old marginalization and a set of different vulnerabilities expose indigenous peoples to the severe effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Economic Effects of Legal Status and Citizenship

Analyzing the economic effects of legal status and citizenship Numerous studies and government data sets have shown that positive financial outcomes correlate with legal status and citizenship. Within the immigrant community, economic effects also vary by legal status.

We deal with this possibility by using a regression analysis that controls for these factors to estimate the economic impact that legal status and citizenship have on the nation and its unauthorized immigrant population. The income effect of citizenship for all immigrants In our analysis, we estimate the income premium of citizenship for all immigrants, both documented and undocumented, by comparing the earnings of naturalized and noncitizen immigrant populations while statistically controlling for observable differences other than citizenship that may affect income-level differences between the two groups.

But in a long-term consideration of the impacts on fertility, health, and education benefits for future generations, women’s health and accompanying productivity must receive more attention. Though this study does not capture the costs and benefits of all interventions about women’s health or provide a quantitative cost-benefit analysis for policymakers, our findings point toward investments in the health of girls and women as a potential development opportunity for current and future generations.

FAQs