Is language a bridge or a barrier? Impact of linguistic distance on the health of women and children

We measure the impact of a lack of familiarity with a dominant language on health outcomes and health-seeking behavior among women and children in India. We use language tree data from the Ethnologue to measure the linguistic distance between a person’s mother tongue and the dominant language of the region they live in. We find evidence that increasing linguistic distance results in increased morbidity among women as well as reduced vaccine take-up for their children. Key mechanisms are reduced exposure to health information and decreased autonomy among women, making them less likely to be able to travel to a health clinic by themselves. Our results are robust to a number of alternative measures of linguistic distance, and suggest an added burden of being a migrant.