Asian Success isn't an Accident

Asian's lead in numerous categories that predict success

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Highlights of women’s earnings in 2023 (August 2024) has numerous interesting graphs. I’m going to focus on one, Figure 1, which is chart 3 in their report, except I reorder the bars by the highest earning group to lowest.

While it is true that men earn more than women, the story is a little more complicated than that, but what I will focus on is the fact that Asian men out earn everyone by a substantial amount, while Asian women out earn everyone except Asian men. Despite the fact that men outearn women, Asian women are able to outearn White men. This isn’t an accident.

Figure 1. Data from the BLS.

I noted in The Diversity Issue at MIT (8/27/2024) that Asian’s account for 41% of SAT scores above 1400, which is an amazing overrepresentation which I first wrote about in Affirmative Action, SAT Scores, Asian Excellence and Harvard (7/5/2023). Certainly, SAT scores as high as this will likely lead to high-paying careers, but how did Asians end up scoring so well on the SAT?

What follows are numerous graphs that make the case that these high SAT scores and eventual high earnings of Asians should not be a surprise. The years vary, and to the best of my knowledge, they represent the most recent data for the given category. This is a sample of results and certainly all years may not be the same, but in all cases one wouldn’t expect them to vary much year over year.

What we find is that Asians lead the pack in all categories and, in some instances, by a lot. Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks follow them in that order consistently. This is almost the same order as earnings, except that Blacks earn more than Hispanics, yet Hispanic men outearn Black women, and this is the one instance where men of a lower-earning group outearn the women in the group above. Further, the difference between Blacks and Hispanics is much smaller than the differences between other groups. We shouldn’t be surprised if Hispanics outearn Blacks in the future.

Let’s go to the data.

Two parents

Figure 2 is the percentage of children living with both parents in 2020 from the Census Bureau article Percentage and Number of Children Living With Two Parents Has Dropped Since 1968 (4/12/2021). This includes married parents and unmarried parents living together, although the later category is no more than 6 percentage points and only 1.6 points for Asians.

Figure 2. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Over 10% more Asian children as compared to Whites are living with both parents, while over twice as many Asian kids are living with both parents as compared to Black kids. This is not to say that single parents can’t be successful, but having two parents generally is a benefit for the children.

The Census Bureau has a more recent article, Parent/Child Family Groups With Children Under 18 (11/14/2023), with a nice time series of this data, Figure 3. Consistently, Asians have a higher percentage of children living with both parents.

Figure 3. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Homework

If one is going to score high on the SATs, the odds of doing so are increased if you do your homework. Figure 4 is from the Brooking article Analyzing ‘the homework gap’ among high school students (11/10/2017). Asians are doing twice the amount of homework compared to Whites, who come in second.

Figure 4. Data from Brookings.

Figure 5 is older data from the NCES post Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities (2007). Doing homework consistently over multiple nights is typically more effective than cramming it in one night. In this data set, 68% of Asian high school students are doing homework 5 or more nights a week, with Whites a distant second at 44%.

Figure 5. Data from the NCES.

Highest math and science course

Asian students work extremely hard, which results in them taking a disproportionate number of courses at the highest level in high school. The data for the next two graphs come from the NCES report Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2018 (February 2019).

Calculus is the highest-level math course in high school. In 2013, 45% of the students in high school calculus were Asian (Figure 6). Meanwhile, the highest-level science course in high school is AP or IB science, which had 40% Asian students in 2013 (Figure 7).

Figure 6. Data from the NCES.

Figure 7. Data from the NCES.

Reading scores

Asians excel at math and science while still leading the pack in reading scores. Figure 8 is from the NCES report Indicator 10: Reading Achievement (February 2019).

Figure 8. Data from NCES.

Suspensions

Figure 9 is also from an NCES report, Indicator 15: Retention, Suspension, and Expulsion (February 2019), and it is the percentage of out-of-school suspensions. Only 1.1% of Asian students have been suspended, a third of Whites the second group.

Figure 9. Data from the NCES.

Chronic absenteeism

The Department of Education report Chronic Absenteeism in the Nation’s Schools defines chronically absent as missing at least 15 days of school in a year and notes that chronically absent students are “at serious risk of falling behind in school.”

Figure 10 is the percentage of chronically absent by group. The story is the same: Asian students are by far the least chronically absent.

Figure 10. Data from Chronic Absenteeism in the Nation’s Schools.

Conclusions

The data, albeit from different years, is clear: Asians make better personal choices, work harder, and value education more than Whites, Hispanics, or Blacks. It is not an accident that they are financially more successful than all other groups.

Please share and like

Sharing and liking posts attracts new readers and boosts algorithm performance. Everything you do is appreciated.

Comments

Please point out if you think something was expressed wrongly or misinterpreted. I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than be correct. I welcome comments and disagreement. We should all be forced to express our opinions and change our minds, but we should also know how to respectfully disagree and move on. Send me article ideas, feedback, or other thoughts at briefedbydata@substack.com.

Bio

I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD Math: Stochastic Processes, MS Applied Statistics, MS Math, BS Math, BS Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks R for College Mathematics and Statistics and Applied Calculus with R. I welcome any collaborations.