Report: Asian-American Subgroups Among Nation’s Poorest - Higher Education

Report: Asian-American Subgroups Among Nation’s Poorest - Higher Education: As the nation continues to crawl out of the Great Recession, some subgroups of Asian-Americans are among the poorest populations, based on income sources, home foreclosures and housing burden, according to a new study by University of California, Los Angeles researchers.

Multiple economic indicators show Southeast Asians, for instance, consistently among the so-called have-nots, said Melany De La Cruz-Viesca, one of the study’s co-authors.

“On one hand, data has shown decade after decade the ongoing reliance on food stamps and social welfare programs by Southeast Asians,” De La Cruz-Viesca said. “But I’m also somewhat surprised, as we enter the fourth decade of them living in this country, that language barriers are still so persistent and that there haven’t been more experiences and opportunities to transition them to new labor markets.”