Asian-American Recipe: Future-Oriented Parents, Less Borrowing

It’s no surprise to see in new figures from the St. Louis Federal Reserve that ethnic Asian households in America, on balance, do better academically and have higher incomes. Their achievement phenomenon is one of the great U.S. stories of the last two generations. But this summer’s study breaks down such success into at least two notable components. The first is the parental influence. Typically parent backgrounds, particularly the holding of college degrees, are a great predictor of offspring attainments. This is dramatically less so in Asian families, which means that more parents without higher-ed are nevertheless able to imbue study-and-advance ideas into their children. Socioeconomic circumstance needn’t dictate outcome. A second takeaway is that once in college, Asian-Americans rely much less on student loans (less than 17% of post-grad households carry this debt) than their countrymen. (The comparable figure in black households is nearly 62%.) However accomplished–more seed corn? more side hustles?–this avoidance in turn provides more running room for building wealth after graduation. We read much about lessened mobility in our supposedly class-stratified country. The Asian experience continues to belie this, and the data help to explain why.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/aug/asian-american-households-had-more-college-grads-higher-incomes-2022