We next collapse these English skill categories into an English deficiency index to be used in our analyses:
TABLE II English Deficiency Index of Hispanic Workers in the 1980 and 1990 PUMS English Skill Category Coefficient Standard Error Only speaks English at home 0.000 - Speaks English "very well" 0.107 0.024 Speaks English "well" 0.392 0.037 Speaks English "not well" 0.856 0.062 No English is spoken 1.000 - Notes: Only the Hispanic sample is used to estimate this index.
To test whether gender influences the earnings penalty associated with poor English skills, we use the English deficiency index from above and estimate: