Economic and educational benefits of mother tongue and second language use: Evidence from Uzbekistan

Despite growing recognition of the role of language skills in shaping human capital, the understanding of their influence on individual success in multilingual transition countries such as Uzbekistan remains limited. This study addresses this gap by empirically examining the interdependence of mother tongue and second-language use with individual income and academic attainment. The estimation draws on nationally representative microdata from the 2021 Household Budget Survey (HBS), based on a randomly distributed sample across all regions of Uzbekistan. The study estimates the return on language capital, contributing to a better understanding of its economic and academic outcomes in Uzbekistan. The empirical strategy applies well-established models (Marschak, Rubinstein, Grin, etc.) and the Mincer earnings function to new data using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) with regional fixed effects, where income premiums are associated with each linguistic group and respondents’ educational level. The findings reveal that the return on income for respondents with native Uzbek is not higher than for respondents who speak other languages. Moreover, native language education has no statistically significant effect on improving educational attainment levels. In contrast, the use of a second language (primarily English) increases earnings by 10–20% on average, with higher income premiums observed in economically active regions. The implications of the study include the interpretation of weaknesses in existing language practices and policies.