People are walking along the busy streets of Chinatown in New York City. About 11% of Chinese Americans live in poverty, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. Spencer Pratt/Getty Images Hide Caption
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People are walking along the busy streets of Chinatown in New York City. About 11% of Chinese Americans live in poverty, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.
Spencer Pratt/Getty Images
A Nepalese immigrant in his early 40s described the stress and anxiety he felt during his college years about how he would cover rent, food, and tuition despite receiving a scholarship.
A Hmong man in his mid-30s said he was struggling with deciding whether to go to university or stay employed to support his family.
Another Pakistani woman in her early 30s said she didn’t see her father much as a child because he worked constantly to support his family and relatives in Pakistan.
These were some of the responses in a new Pew Research Center report on the wide range of experiences of Asian Americans living in poverty, based on 18 focus groups in 12 languages with 144 participants.
The report was part of a series of studies released Wednesday to understand economic hardship for Asian Americans on both a quantitative and qualitative scale. This project was based on focus groups, census, and survey data.
Nationally, one in 10 people of Asian descent lives below the poverty line. However, the researchers found that the rates varied widely depending on the country of origin. For example, about 6% of Indian Americans live in poverty, compared to 19% of Burmese Americans.
Through focus groups, the researchers also found that Asian Americans’ challenges and opinions about poverty differed by age and whether they were born or immigrated to the United States.
“Experiences that are common to Asian Americans living in poverty, such as daily economic hardship, the assumption that others don’t need help because they are Asian, and the importance of economic security in achieving the American Dream.” “There is,” he said. Neil G. Lewis, co-author of a series of Pew reports;
Burmese, Hmong, and Mongolian Americans experience the highest poverty rates
About 17% of Hmong Americans and 16% of Mongolian Americans live below the poverty line, according to a Pew analysis of the 2022 American Community Survey.
Poverty rates across Korean, Malaysian, Laotian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Cambodian groups ranged from 10% to 13%. Poverty rates for Nepali, Japanese, Sri Lankan, and Filipino American groups ranged from 6% to 9%.
The analysis also found that 26% of all Asians living below the poverty line reside in just three major cities: New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Asian American poverty rates also exist in Fresno, California. Buffalo, New York. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, according to the analysis.
Within large cities, poverty rates may vary even more for Asian groups. For example, approximately 32% of Bangladeshi immigrants and 29% of Pakistani immigrants in the city experience poverty, according to a 2021 report from the New York City Mayor’s Office.
About one-fifth of survey respondents said they had never asked family, friends or the government for help.
Pew researchers found that 61% of Asian adults living in poverty rely on family and friends when it comes to finding help with bills, housing, food and work.
Nearly half of respondents said they also want government assistance at the local, state, and federal level. Meanwhile, 19% of respondents said they had never sought or received assistance from the government, religious institutions, or community groups.
Lewis said some participants in Pew’s focus group shared that they have difficulty accessing government programs because they are not fluent in English and the programs are not translated into their native language.
She also found that Asian immigrants who are refugees or asylum seekers are more familiar with government aid than Asians who immigrated to the United States for other reasons, such as educational opportunities.
Asian Americans say they don’t know how to save and invest
According to a Pew survey, 57% of Asian adults living in poverty said they were unable to save for an emergency in the past year.
Lewis said that in focus groups last year, participants shared that part of the problem was simply not having enough money to secure it. Another factor was lack of financial literacy.
“I’ve heard from people that even if they could save money, they didn’t know how,” he says.
Lewis added that not knowing how to save and invest was a particularly common complaint among focus group participants who were born in the United States.
A 2023 study by JPMorgan Chase found that confidence in achieving retirement goals varies by culture. While 68% of Indian participants and 59% of Vietnamese participants said they were confident about saving for retirement, only 35% of Korean participants felt the same way.
U.S.-born Asian Americans expressed skepticism about whether education guarantees success
The role and importance of education was a common theme in the focus groups.
While many foreign-born Asian participants believed that education is the key to escaping poverty, U.S.-born Asian respondents believed their future was determined by the type of education they received. He said there was a trend.
“For some, a bachelor’s degree wasn’t necessarily the best,” he added. “But then you heard about financial education and learning how to invest.”
Lewis said focus groups discussed the belief that education alone is not enough for English-speaking U.S.-born Asians to succeed, adding that networking and financial literacy play a role.
