Income inequality growing among Asian Americans
Now highest among any ethnic group in nation
Income inequality has risen steadily among all Americans since the 1970s. But the gap between rich and poor has grown the fastest – and is the widest –among Asians, who have displaced blacks as the most economically divided racial group in the United States.
The finding, in a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, paints a more complex economic portrait of Asian Americans than is often captured by snapshots showing Asians at the top of the income ladder.
While Asians as a whole rank as the country’s highest-earning group, economic gains for lower-income Asians between 1970 and 2016 trailed far behind those made by their counterparts in other racial and ethnic groups, the report said.
“Asians are often depicted as the highest-achieving group in America, but it’s clear they are the most economically divided, with a significant share of Asian Americans lagging well behind lower-income whites,” said Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher at Pew.
Rising inequality among Asians, the country’s fastest-growing minority, can be largely explained by immigration patterns and the diverse reasons immigrants from an array of Asian countries settle in the United States, Kochhar said.
Immigrants, largely from China, India, Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam, accounted for 81 percent of the growth in the Asian adult population between 1970 and 2016. Nearly 80 percent of Asian adults in 2016 were foreign-born, compared with 45 percent in 1970.
Asian immigration surged after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which favored family reunification. The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 brought a wave of refugees. One result, the report said, was that the share of new Asian immigrants working in higher-paid, highskilled jobs dropped between 1970 and 1990.
A new wave of Asian immigrants came to the country after the 1990 Immi- gration Act that sought skilled workers during the tech boom. Many of the latest arrivals came from India, initially under the high-skilled H−1B visa program.
“Asian Americans come from a wide range of countries and cultures with different assimilation trajectories,” Kochhar said.
Three-quarters of Indian adults in the United States have at least a college degree, compared with less than a third of Vietnamese, less than a fifth of Laotians and Cambodians, and about half of Chinese, Pakistanis and Filipinos.
Median household income varies from $100,000 among Indians to $36,000 among Burmese. Poverty rates among Asians are as high as 35 percent among Burmese and 33 percent among Bhutanese.
Income distribution among Asians has gone from being one of the most equal in the United States to being the most unequal over the past five decades, the report said.
During that time, the gap in the standard of living between Asians near the top and the bottom of the income ladder nearly doubled.