A Comparison of State-Level Differences in Asian-American Poverty

Author's Notes: You all might notice a major change to the content of this blog, that being the variety and sophistication of data visualizations representing raw data. After initially learning and using Tableau for my graduate capstone project in the Spring, I have been practicing data visualization creation offline. Now, I am please to announce that I will start creating and using Tableau-created visualizations to supplement qualitative information presented on this blog, and may still use Excel-created visualizations in some situations. For today, I will post just the static (non-interactive) versions, and will update this page with the interactive online versions once I make my Tableau public account and publish my visualizations (past and future) there. 

Comparing State-Level Differences in Asian-American Poverty

Introduction: Today's post will be a "spin-off" of the three-part Asian-American poverty series that I published just after starting this blog, which in turn was originally a graduate-level research paper. Here, I will look at the distribution of Asian-American poverty across the United States, with a focus on differences at the state-level, and whether there are any regional differences in poverty rates. 

Methodology: Like with the project that this post is based off of, I utilized the Census Bureau's definition of poverty, which states that an impoverished individual (or family) is one whose pre-tax income (including wages, tips, cash benefits, etc.) falls below a pre-calculated threshold that varies based on family size and tax filing status ("How the Census Bureau"). As noted in the original post, a person with income falling below 100% of their Federal poverty limit is defined as being in poverty. Furthermore, the same Census definition of who an Asian-American is will also be used here. That definition states that an Asian-American is:

     A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian      subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the      Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam ("About Race"). 

Data for this post came from the Census Bureau's microdata database, which allows for users to create custom tables of Census data. Specifically, I utilized the American Community Survey 1-year estimates for 2018 (the most recent year available), and downloaded data on the raw numbers of Asian-Americans and impoverished Asian-Americans per state. After collecting and compiling the data, I manually calculated the proportion of Asian-Americans falling below the poverty line. 

Results and Analysis:

Table 1: Summary Statistics

Notes: Under the quartiles row, values in red represent values represent the middle 50% of the variable distribution. 

Map 1: Map of Asian-American Poverty by State, 2018

Chart 1: Bar Chart of Asian-American Poverty by State, 2018

When breaking down 2018 Asian-American poverty levels by state, the proportion of Asian-Americans in poverty ranges from Maryland's 6.5% to West Virginia's 22.62%, with the nationwide average being 11.91%. 

Based on the results in Visual 1, several regional trends in Asian-American poverty rates stand out, especially geographical blocs of states with similar poverty rates. Most notably, the Upper Mountain West states (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming) and the neighboring state of Nebraska feature significantly higher Asian-American poverty rates than the rest of the country. Another regional bloc of states with similar rates of Asian-American poverty are the Mid-Atlantic states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., all of which have very low rates of Asian-American poverty. With the exception of Rhode Island, New England also featured low levels of Asian-American poverty in 2018. The same holds true for the Southwest and Pacific Coast states except Alaska, as most have Asian-American poverty rates lower than the national average. 

Otherwise, and with the exception of several random states (e.g. Indiana, Mississippi, West Virginia), very few states have Asian-American poverty levels that are significantly higher than the national average. Chart 1 further confirms these trends, showing that a vast majority of states feature Asian-American poverty rates below, or just above, the national average. As seen on both the map and Chart 1, two states (Wyoming and West Virginia) stand out at the far right portion of the graph as significant outliers, both of whom have poverty rates that are 5% higher than the next highest state (Mississippi)

Conclusion: The results of today's brief data analysis show that Asian-American poverty rates are relatively even between states, with more having poverty rates that are significantly lower than the national average. As noted earlier, the notable regional trends include the Upper Mountain West region having a bloc of states with significantly higher-than-average rates of Asian-American poverty, and the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic blocs having significantly lower-than-average rates of poverty, on average. Today's post will not speculate or analyze why these trends could potentially exist, although a future post could potentially touch on these unanswered questions. 

Works Cited:

“About Race.” United States Census Bureau, www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html. Accessed 23 Aug. 2020. 

“How the Census Bureau measures poverty.” United States Census Bureau, www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidance/poverty-measures.html#. Accessed 23 Aug. 2020.

Data Source:

"Explore Census Data." United States Census Bureau, data.census.gov/cedsci/. Accessed 22 Aug. 2020. 

     Nathan Parmeter

     Author and Host, The Parmeter Politics and Policy Record