Wells Fargo A National Survey Of Financial Attitude And Behaviors

Analyzing Economic Inequality in Hispanic Immigrant Population in the United States by Using Micro/Macro-Level Lenses

Compared to California’s education demographics, San Leandro has a higher percentage of high school graduate, but a lower percentage of higher educational attainment compared to the entire nation (bachelor’s degree or higher). Using Thompson and Hickey’s model for social class in the United States (2005), my family would be considered working class. This is defined as “clerical, pink and blue collar workers with often low job security; common household incomes range from $16,000 to $30,000 [and] high school education” (Thompson et al., 2005). My mother currently works as a part-time waitress and is going to community college to receive an associate’s degree in accounting. My father has been working as a full-time cook at a Chinese restaurant in Oakland Chinatown for about 25 years. His highest level of educational attainment is high school. These racial and social class demographics are important in understanding my social location.

As of 2012, Asian Americans had the highest educational attainment level and median household income of any racial demographic in the country, and in 2008, they had the highest median household income overall of any racial demographic. Despite holding the highest educational attainment level and median household income of any racial demographic in American society in a 2014 census conducted by the U.S. census bureau reported that Asians in the U.S. 12% were living below the poverty line which is higher than non-Hispanic White Americans who only have 10.1% of them living below the poverty line. This is largely due to the fact that a high percentage of Asian Americans are immigrants, and independently of race, immigrants are more likely than the native-born to be poor. Once the country of birth and other demographic factors are taken into account, Asian-Americans are no more likely than non-Hispanic whites to live in poverty. American Asian one of the faster-growing groups in the North America. Asian American people lives in a different city in the United State. Which includes the people from India, Indonesia, Chinese, Japanese, Korea, Philippine, Thai, and Vietnamese. According to health, the Asian American people have many critical problems such as Heart

According to the article Chinese in America by Jonathan Lee, he describes the experiences of Chinese in America and how they immigrated,

Chinese coming raised issues of social and cultural diversity, discrimination, and national identity when migrating to the United States Relocate to the west- People moved for the availability of land. Americans sought the cheap land that would afford them economic independence. America’s growing industry-

Employment challenges and economic disparities amongst Hispanics in the United States has been an ongoing battle, social policies along with institutions continue to perpetuate poverty among Latinos’ and African Americans. According to Liu (2011), Labor market segmentation by race/ethnicity, gender, and national origin has been recognized as a prominent feature of urban labor markets in immigrant gateway cities across the United States. A direct example of this would be when Cubans’ immigrated to Miami in the 1960’s, at first, they were welcomed by the Americans with open arms until they realized they could be in competition for employment as the Cubans were not leaving to go back home. This created many issues especially when it came to welfare,

New York City's fastest growing immigrant group are Dominicans, a Spanish speaking people, flocking from the Dominican Republic to the United States, New York City in specific. In 1980 the Dominican population in NYC was 125,380, in 1990 it was 332,713, and today in 1999 it is an estimated 500,000 people. The only problem with this is through the years of their migration to America, their per capita income has declined precipitously. It seems as though when the Dominican population in America increases, their income as a whole decreases. Nearly half of the Dominicans in NYC live below the poverty level. In 1990 29% of Dominicans where on welfare. Of foreign people immigrating to the U.S., only people from the former Soviet Union had a higher percentage of people living on public assistance. From 1989 to 1996 their per capita income declined 23% to $6,094 a year, in inflation adjusted dollars, while their poverty rate rose from 37% to 46%, that is almost double for the city as a whole. Unemployment also rose from 17.2% in 1990 to 18.8% in 1996 (Lopez, p. 3). The source of these severe economic problems

From Chinatown to Monterey Park, Asian Americans across the boundaries of Los Angeles are flourishing from bustling inner cities to middle class suburbia. The suburban life style was originally created by white Americans for white Americans however in today’s suburban cities and towns there seems to be a substantial group of Asians and Asian Americans thriving in these once predominately white areas(Li 1993, 318). The development of Asians and Asian Americans in the suburbs occurred through the following three ways, first is the development of Chinatown and how it became the Mecca for immigrants and the second is Asian American assimilation into American society. The last reason is the gentrification of towns such as Chinatown, and Little Tokyo.

When it comes to the data and methods, this study used the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which is a repeated survey that includes the information on household income and wealth holdings; the Federal Reserve conducts this survey every three years. To test the hypothesis there are

population. “The median age of Hmong in 2009 ACS was 20.5 years, much younger than the 36.8 median age of the entire United States population” (Pfeifer, Chiu, and Yang, p.56, 2013). The young age speaks loudly about why the Hmong have been slow to advance economically. Based on the average median household income the Hmong earned about $5,000 less than the average U.S. income. This estimated figure is up from the 1990 and 2000 Census which indicates that the Hmong are moving upward in terms of income, but still besieged by poverty in many households. (Pfeifer, Chiu, and Yang, p.60, 2013) “The 2009 ACS estimated Hmong poverty rate was 26.9 percent compared to 10.5 percent among all U.S. families. The poverty rate has notably decreased from 38 percent in the 2000 Census” (Pfeifer, Chiu, and Yang, p.60,

A survey has said that Asian Americans have a great value on marriages, parernthood, hard work and career success. They had a direct path on having a postive and better life than any other ethnic group in the world.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 52.4% of Asian Americans over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to only 29.9% of the total population and 30.3% of non-Hispanic White Americans, signifying higher overall educational attainment for this group (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). However, this high number failed to consider the differences within the Asian population with some subgroups having educational levels that are significantly below the national average. The 2010 U.S. Census also reported that Asian Americans have a significantly higher annual family income than any other racial groups in the country, though it failed to mention that Asian American families tend to be larger with more family members that are contributing to that high annual income number (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012).

A quarter mile from my house there was an entire plaza of Southeast Asian stores and restaurants and a half mile away was another, larger plaza with mostly Mexican and other Central American businesses and spaces. In spite of this economic activity, the predominance of apartments, with 66.7% of occupied housing units being renter occupied and nearly 80% of the total population living in these units, in addition to 82.1% of the Spanish speaking population over the age of 25 having earned less than a highschool diploma are emblematic of the relationship between being a person of color in this country and the barriers to accumulating wealth. This is supported as well by the fact that 11.4% of those who speak only English at home are below the poverty level whereas this number is 32.8% for those who speak Spanish or Spanish Creole.

Chapter one of the The Contemporary Asian American Experience: Beyond the Model Minority, provides a great overview of the Asian American immigration history to U.S. and the aspects leading to the arrival of refugees from Asian countries. Since the early 1800s, hundreds of thousands of Asians have been migrating to America. As with many other immigrants, they were viewed as low class workers. Asian immigrants had very dangerous and low paid jobs that the majority of whites did not want to do. As a result, many white employers took advantage and exploited them. What strikes me the most is that Asian Americans participated in very important jobs but they were not recognized for their crucial contribution to the prosperity of the United States.

In the early twentieth century, Asian Americans in the United States faced to lots of obstacles. Since they lived in a “different shore”, they were treated as unassimilable people, and therefore, they experienced many unequal and discriminative treatments. Both Asian Americans lived in Hawaii and the mainland lived in unbearable life under racial discrimination. However, due to geographical and ethnic differences, Asian Americans in the mainland had more difficult time, since majority of the United States’ population were white people. Asian Americans in the mainland had an intense competition with white working class. In other words,