hardboiled

disproof and disparities

New survey reveals unexpected statistics for the Chinese American community

On November 12, 2008, the Asian American Studies Program of the University of Maryland in partnership with the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) released A Portrait of Chinese Americans, an extensive survey of Chinese Americans surveying the Chinese American community with regards to age, population distribution and growth, education levels, job occupations, and marriage.

This study is remarkable for being all-encompassing in surveying the Chinese American community.

Far too often, Chinese Americans are not even considered as a separate group in surveys, but thrown in the vague umbrella term Asian American. While those surveys may give insight into the Asian American community as a whole, the results cannot be accurately prescribed to individual ethnic groups in the Asian American community, as a particular group might not reflect the trends that of the encompassing Asian American community.

A study that focuses on a specific ethnic group is progress, in terms of the accuracy of information attributed to that group. Portrait goes even further by organizing survey results by locale. Chinese Americans are divided in sub-ethnic groups based on locations of origin: Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinese Diaspora (those not from the previously mentioned areas). Sub-ethnic groups are compared among each other and the Chinese are compared to other Asian ethnic groups.

Portrait's findings serve to invalidate some of the stereotypes that surround Chinese Americans. A popular one is that Chinese Americans are well-educated and hold advanced degrees. Although the survey reveals that over 50% of Chinese Americans are college-educated and degree-holding, it also shows that a significant percentage, about 20%, of Chinese Americans have less than a high school education.

While the media frequently highlights the Chinese whiz kids enrolled in brand name colleges, the truth is that the percentage of Chinese with less than a high school education is higher than for the general population. The stereotype that Chinese are well-educated goes hand in hand with the belief that they all hold well-paid white collar jobs. The reality is that those without at least a high school education, 1 in 5 Chinese, probably hold menial-wage occupations in limited fields due to their lower education levels.

Chinese Americans are also perceived to be affluent when the reality is that the Chinese community has a poverty rate of 9.4%; the poverty rate for the general population is 9.8%. It doesn't make sense for Chinese Americans to be held as a model minority when their poverty rate is around the same of the average American. In fact, it is a disservice to Chinese Americans to claim they do not face the same financial issues as everyone else, that they are somehow immune to poverty, when the survey reveals the facts to be opposite of the conventional belief.

Through such organization, the survey highlights the disparities between sub-ethnic Chinese groups. The median household income for Taiwanese was significantly higher than that of Mainland Chinese, $91,161 for Taiwanese vs. $70,433 for Mainlanders. A much higher percentage of Mainlanders (16.4%) did not know English, compared to percentages of Hong Kongers and Taiwanese, which were below 3%. Just as the Asian American community is not homogenous, the Chinese sub-ethnic groups are significantly distinct from one another. This information will be useful to Chinese community leaders in addressing important issues such low rates of English proficiency that affect certain Chinese subgroups, such as Mainland Chinese, more so than others, like the Taiwanese.

I was surprised to learn of much higher rates of limited education and poverty and of significant disparities between different Chinese groups. These findings certainly wouldn't have been possible if surveyors hadn't distinguished between different groups of Chinese, and definitely impossible if they sampled the entire Asian American community. I hope that A Portrait of Chinese Americans will inspire extensive surveys of other Asian ethnic communities. Those surveys would probably reveal accurate and precise statistics about the surveyed group, which in turn might aid community leaders in resolving the unique problems that distinct ethnic communities face, just as Portrait is doing for the Chinese community.