WASHINGTON: March of the desis in US: Best educated, richest, and growing

WASHINGTON: Indians in America, dubbed the
“model minority,” continue their march to greater learning and
prosperity, with the latest US Census data showing them surpassing national
metrics in college graduation and wealth by a wide margin.
The median household income of Indians in the US is now $ 123,700, almost
double the national figure of $ 63,922. A remarkable 79 per cent of Indians are
college graduates, compared to the national figure of 34 per cent, attesting to
the emphasis on education in Indian families.

Such is the progress made by
Indians that they comfortably outstrip even other Asian cohorts in US in median
household income levels, with the next best communities, Taiwanese and
Filipinos, coming in at $97,000 and $95,000 respectively. Median household income
of Chinese in the US is $ 85,229 and that of Japanese is $ 84,068.

Indians also have the least poor
people with only 14 per cent reporting median family income below $ 40,000
compared to a 33 per cent nationally. A healthy 25 per cent of Indian households
reported an income of over $ 200,000 compared to the national figure of 8 per
cent.

The census data shows that Indian immigrants on visas and US born citizens of
Indian origin have approximately the same median family income of about $
115,000. But naturalized US citizens from India report a higher median income $
140,000.

Of the nearly four million Indians in the US, roughly 1.6 million are visa
holders, 1.4 million are naturalized US citizens, and one million are US born
citizens.

This gap is wider among other
Asian groups, suggesting that India sends its best and brightest to America, or
that India’s so-called creamy layer is decamping or emigrating to the US,
compared to less educated immigrants from other countries. For instance, among
Korean households, those headed by a person born in US have a median income of
$95,000, but ones headed by Koreans who are not citizens have a median income
of $54,000.

“People of Indian descent
hold a significant share of jobs in several high-paying fields, including
computer science, financial management and medicine. Nine percent of doctors in
the US are of Indian descent, and more than half of them are immigrants,”
a New York Times analysis of the data noted.

The report said the number of
people who identify as Asian in the US has nearly tripled in the past three
decades, and Asians are now the fastest-growing of the nation’s four largest
racial and ethnic groups. The number of counties where people of Asian descent
represent more than 5 percent of the population has risen from 39 in 1990 to
176 in 2020.

A Pew Research Center analysis of the data said the
Asian population in the US, which currently stands at 23 million, is projected
to reach 46 million by 2060. In 1990, the country’s Asian population numbered
6.6 million.