This paper examines the economic consequences of bilingualism. Specifically, we explore
whether the ability to effectively communicate in English and Spanish is rewarded in labor
markets. Using a sample of the Hispanic population drawn from U.S. census data for the
year 2000 we find that controlling for education, gender, age, place of birth, sector and
region of employment, bilingualism has a substantively small positive relation with higher
income. However, our results also show that bilingualism is negatively correlated with wagebased
income among different ocupational categories and sectors, but particularly among
managers and those employed in the public sector.