Indian Americans have highest educational attainment.
AB Wire
Indian American women earn more on average, and Chinese American women earn about the same, when compared to non-Hispanic white men in the United States, according to data based on annual incomes from the 2014 American Community Survey.
Economist Mark Perry wrote on Monday that the median Asian American woman earns only about 3 percent less than the median American man, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The median Asian American woman also earns significantly more than the median black or Hispanic man in the United States, according to a report in The Washington Post.
Education has a lot to do with the Asian-woman advantage. More than half of Asian Americans over 25 have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to only 33 percent of non-Hispanic whites. And 21.8 percent of Asian Americans also have graduate or professional degrees, compared to 12.8 percent of non-Hispanic whites, the Post report said.
In other words, Asian Americans are 50 percent more likely to have bachelor’s degrees, and nearly twice as likely to hold PhDs, law degrees, MBAs, or MDs.
Educational attainment is even higher for some ethnic groups. About 72 percent of Indian Americans have four-year college degrees, and a whopping 40 percent have some professional or graduate degree. The Post report said that it translates to Indian Americans are more likely to have advanced degrees than white Americans are likely to have finished college, the report said.
Compared to Asian American men, Asian American women only make 78 cents on the dollar, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is the largest gender gap among these racial and ethnic categories. The smallest gender gap was among African Americans — black women earn nearly 90 cents on the dollar compared to black men.