Economist Mark Perry wrote 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.
While full-time working women in the U.S. may earn 79 cents on the dollar compared to men, Indian American women actually earn more on average compared to non-Hispanic white men, according to a media report. Full-time working women may earn 79 cents on the dollar compared to men, according to the Census, but that figure doesn’t take into account the gender differences in education and career choices, among other things.
Mark Perry, at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, came to this startling conclusion based on an analysis of a new government report on the gap between men’s and women’s earnings.
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.
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. Indian Americans are more likely to have advanced degrees than white Americans are likely to have finished college.
Yet, after accounting for race, education, experience, career choice and so on, economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that about two-fifths of the gender pay gap remained unexplained by those factors, leaving gender discrimination as a major culprit. Other studies have found that the gender gap is even smaller if you control for college GPA, or take into account the fringe benefits offered in sectors dominated by women.
Chinese American women earn about the same as white men, he concluded, based on data on annual incomes from the 2014 American Community Survey, which are slightly different from the weekly wage data used by the of Bureau of Labor Statistics. And 21.8 percent of Asian Americans also have graduate or professional degrees, compared to 12.8 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Indian Americans are more likely to have advanced degrees than white Americans are likely to have finished college. It’s not surprising then, that Asian Americans tend to out-earn other groups, the Washington Post said.
