Disadvantages of linguistic origin-Evidence from immigrant literacy scores

•Estimation of gaps in literacy scores resulting from linguistic origin.•Unique linguistic data on language differences.•Cross-national design to control for origin- and destination-effects.•Sizable disadvantages by linguistic origin, increasing with age at arrival.•Moderate convergence of linguistically distant immigrants by time of residence.

This study quantifies the disadvantage in literacy skills that arises from the linguistic distance between their mother tongue and host country language, combining individual cross-country data on literacy scores with unique information on the linguistic distance between languages.