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Immigration looms large in defining the Asian experience
Asians are America’s fastest growing major racial and ethnic population. The Asian adult civilian household population in the U.S. increased fourteenfold from 1970 to 2016, compared with an eightfold increase in the Hispanic population, the second-fastest growing group. The overall adult civilian household population roughly doubled from 1970 to 2016.23
The increase in the Asian population is fueled by immigration. From 1970 to 2016, immigrants accounted for 81% of the increase in the Asian adult population, and the immigrant share in the Asian population increased to 78% in 2016, from 45% in 1970.24 The change in the economic profile of the Asian population in recent decades reflects the immigrant experience to a large degree.
Overall, Asian immigrants have higher levels of education than native-born Americans. In 2015, 29% of immigrants from South and East Asia,25 ages 25 and older, held a bachelor’s degree, compared with 19% of native-born Americans this age. Another 23% of these immigrants had an advanced college degree, about double the rate among native-born Americans (11%).
As a result, many Asian immigrants are settling in at the top of the income distribution and likely stretching its boundaries into higher reaches. As of 2016, the foreign-born population among the top 10% of earners in the Asian income distribution had increased to 26 times what it was in 1970, compared with a nineteenfold increase in the overall Asian foreign-born population in the U.S.26
At the same time, the Asian immigrant population includes many with lower levels of education and income. From 1970 to 2016, the foreign-born population among the bottom 10% of earners in the Asian income distribution increased seventeenfold. This change is not as sharp as the change at the top of the income distribution but is of notable magnitude nonetheless.
In 2015, some 15% of immigrants from South and East Asia lacked a high school diploma, compared with 9% of native-born Americans. Meanwhile, poverty rates were as high as 35% among Burmese, 33% among Bhutanese, and 28% among Hmong and Malaysians, compared with 15.1% in the U.S. overall.27 The wide diversity in the education and income profiles of Asian origin groups is reflected in the relatively wide gap in their income distribution.
The growth in income inequality among Asians also reflects shifting trends in immigration to a degree. In recent decades, Asian immigration was first driven by the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965 and the end to the war in Vietnam in 1975. These events brought in a wave of refugees and other immigrants under the family reunification program. As a result, the share of new Asian immigrants working in low-skill occupations increased from 1970 to 1990. A second wave of Asian immigration followed the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990. This act, in concert with a boom in the technology sector, led to a new wave of higher-skilled Asian immigrants under the H-1B visa program. |
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