Biracial Asian and white: Demographic and labor market status

• Main Author: Linus YAMANE
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: General Association of Economists from Romania 2018-12-01
• Series: Theoretical and Applied Economics
• Subjects: labor market discrimination; minorities; race; Asian-Americans; bi-racial; multi-racial; glassceilings
• Online Access: http://store.ectap.ro/articole/1359.pdf

This paper examines the socioeconomic status of biracial Asian/White Americans using American Community Survey data for the six largest Asian ethnic groups from 2009-2013. Are Asian/White Americans treated like Asian Americans, are they able to “pass” as White Americans, or do they have their own unique experiences? Along many dimensions like average earnings, years of education, geographic concentration, Hispanic identification, and nativity, the biracial Asian/White experience falls between the Asian alone and White alone experiences. Biracial Asian/White Americans have better labor market outcomes than Asian alone Americans. In particular, there is no evidence of a glass ceiling for Asian/White Americans as there is for Asian Americans. But along dimensions like industry and occupation distribution, we cannot reject the hypothesis that these distributions are completely random.