Reading Between the Data: The Incomplete Story of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders

Income inequality has become one of our greatest obstacles to economic mobility, as U.S. residents today face unequal opportunities and access to the American Dream. Some people have it better than others: Whites earn higher incomes and greater access to education and health care than communities of color.1 But there are large variations even between different communities of color, with African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans—as well as multiracial Americans and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, or AAPI—all facing different challenges. There are further differences within these individual populations, particularly among AAPIs. This report discusses some of the data available on Asian Americans. It then presents and explains the challenges associated with the data and offers policy recommendations to address them.