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What an English accent is worth?

Imagine two people with the same education, the same experience, even the same vocabulary. One of them earns substantially more, and the only difference is how they sound. It sounds absurd, yet across much of the Global South, it is closer to reality than we like to admit.

The reason begins with what English unlocks. In India, researchers using the India Human Development Survey found that men who speak English fluently earn about 34% more per hour than men who speak none, and even a little English carried a 13% premium. That fluency bonus is roughly on par with finishing secondary school. English does not make anyone smarter, of course. What it gives people is access: to better universities, to multinational employers, and to international clients. Let's see how this proves true in the Global South.

The Philippines shows how far this can go with its outsourcing industry, which currently employs around 1.6 million people and earns roughly $32 billion a year, partly because of its large English-speaking workforce.

That access exists because of colonial history, and independence did not undo it. Pakistan's constitution set 1988 as the deadline for replacing English with Urdu, yet English still dominates higher education, law, and corporate life today. Kenya kept English's prestige after independence, and in 2025, Nigeria reaffirmed it as the language of instruction from primary school to university, pointing to its 500-plus indigenous languages and a shortage of teachers and materials. Once a country's schools, offices, and courts are built around a language, letting go of it becomes very difficult.

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Of course, a language that opens doors raises another question: who gets to learn it well? Wealthy families raise children speaking English at home and send them to English-medium schools. Poorer families want the same advantage but often cannot reach it. In Islamabad, private schooling can cost $80 to $140 a month, while the median monthly wage in Pakistan is about $120. And after all that investment, there is still the IELTS exam, which costs around $270, more than two months of that median wage, just to confirm what thirteen years of English schooling had already proven.

Even then, fluency may not be enough. A meta-analysis of 139 findings found that candidates with standard accents were rated more hireable, partly because listeners read the accent as a sign of social status. The effect reaches online, too. Also, a study of 5,367 TED Talks found that speakers with non-native accents received less engagement, even after accounting for topic and fame, because of stereotypes and the extra effort of processing an unfamiliar accent.

All of this feeds a loop. That is, English brings opportunity, so families who can afford it invest in English-medium schooling. Their children grow up more fluent and more comfortable, which helps them land better jobs, and eventually they raise their own children in English from birth. English can be a ladder to mobility, but some people are born halfway up it.

None of this means English itself is the villain. It connects a Filipino call centre worker to an American company and gives a Nigerian academic an international audience. The trouble starts when we mistake access to English, or a particular accent, for intelligence. One is ability, the other is opportunity.

So the question is not only what an English accent is worth. It is who can afford to acquire one.

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