Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/300647 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
QUCEH Working Paper Series No. 24-07
Publisher: 
Queen's University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH), Belfast
Abstract: 
Why do we choose one language over another? Rival views see language frontiers as exogenous, driven by policy, or endogenous, determined by social, cultural and economic forces. We study language loss in nineteenth-century Ireland's bilingual society using individual-level data from the 1901 census. Our analysis highlights the intergenerational influence of the education received by a community's elders on subsequent generations' language use. This is consistent with an endogenous demand for English driving language choice because the elder generation's literacy was acquired by attending privately financed voluntary primary schools in a period that predates state-funded compulsory schooling.
Subjects: 
language loss
bilingualism
education policy
census data
Ireland
JEL: 
I24
I28
N33
N93
R12
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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