Report co-author Dr. Paul Ong is concerned about the “huge” economic disparities among some Asian ethnic subgroups.
Multiple economic indicators show Southeast Asians, for instance, consistently among the so-called have-nots, said Melany De La Cruz-Viesca, one of the study’s co-authors.
“On one hand, data has shown decade after decade the ongoing reliance on food stamps and social welfare programs by Southeast Asians,” De La Cruz-Viesca said. “But I’m also somewhat surprised, as we enter the fourth decade of them living in this country, that language barriers are still so persistent and that there haven’t been more experiences and opportunities to transition them to new labor markets.”
De La Cruz-Viesca’s remarks came during a teleconference call this week. The call followed a webinar late last month titled, “What We Don’t Know About Economic Inequality in Asian America,” hosted by PolicyLink, a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity.
With financial support from the Ford Foundation, the UCLA scholars examined home ownership, income sources and other assets of Asian-Americans in eight states. Major findings of their study were released at the PolicyLink webinar.
In all eight states—whether California with the nation’s largest Asian population, or Mississippi where they barely comprise 1 percent—the researchers discovered that at least 64 percent of Asians were foreign-born. The rates in each state were higher than those of foreign-born Latinos.
From 2007-09, about 23 percent of Hmong-Americans in Fresno, Calif., relied on cash public assistance for income, while only 10 percent of all Asian-Americans as a racial group there did so. Meanwhile, only 3 percent of Whites there drew cash public assistance.
