America's top earners are Asian men | Hacker News Reader

America's top earners are Asian men

washingtonpost.com

48 pointsjgalt21265 comments

Asian immigrants are the top earners because they come from the top talent pool in their home countries.

If you are in India or China, you can not just board a plane to US. The best way to immigrate to US is to perform well in STEM education, then go to US for higher studies. Since it is difficult for them to get a US visa, most of the people who are able to go through the whole process are usually the top performers who work very hard.

Exactly this. It's simply selection bias. There is no filter for earning a citizenship at birth, but there is one when you immigrate.

So in America (or any nation) you will end up with a relatively average (native born) population, with disparities in earnings accounted for by the relative economic strength by historical accident of the racial/gender groups, who themselves are effectively in competition with the top 1% of foreign countries (since those are the only ones given the opportunity to migrate).

Thus you have the results seen above.

I don't understand this "selection bias" argument at all. How is it that in all other countries in the World with a significant minority Asian population do Asians always top the rest with respect to earning? I'm sure not all countries in the World have as strict an immigration policy as the USA.

I think on top of immigration polices, there is also a natural selective process imposed on Asian immigration just through sheer logistics. For example, through having the financial means to go to a different country. The average income in China is about 7 000 USD - which means that the average Chinese individual would have to save up roughly half their yearly income to come to the states.

Then on top of that, a person with money needs to have the entrepreneurial and pioneer spirit to leave their home country and go somewhere totally new. That isn't normal. Perhaps that isn't so much the case today, but in the mid 80s around the time my parents came here no one in their family were here and it was very rare to see someone from our racial background. Something about just leaving your home and taking a huge gamble in flying across the ocean in search of a better life, that seems to show the ability to dream of a better life and sacrifice in search of it, which is by no means common.

My dad told me that in leaving Sri Lanka, he took the student visa route which involved writing some exam (probably the GRE but I never got the specifics). Anyways, did terribly on the exam a few times and then kept paying to take it over. He also spent hundreds on application fees to foreign universities. He told me that during this time, a bunch of people from his village in Sri Lanka would be sitting around laughing at him for all his failures and wasted effort. I think what the shows is that the desire to emigrate was no only difficult but at the time was by no means normal. It wasn't everyone who was putting in the gargantuan effort to escape Sri Lanka (of course this was before the civil war got really bad so the situation likely changed as the 80s wore on.)

I think these factors also contribute to economic sucess.

You're only accounting for one form of selection bias when in reality there are two.

The first form of selection bias is inside your country. If you don't already have status and wealth, then you won't even be able to overcome the cognitive/emotional load that's required to leave your country.

The second form of selection bias is when the Immigration Officer says yes or no.

The first form of selection bias is far more effective at weeding out the "low" earners and ensuring the top earners are pre-selected for immigration.

There is a third form of selection bias but that may not help with this conversation, and that's geographical. Crossing an ocean has historically been seen as riskier then crossing land, so that weeds out the risk averse.

These do not fall under "selection bias" when you take this article into context. According to the definition of "selection bias": "Selection bias is the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population intended to be analyzed."

> The first form of selection bias is inside your country. If you don't already have status and wealth, then you won't even be able to overcome the cognitive/emotional load that's required to leave your country.

But what you said doesn't reflect reality. Many of those who migrate to the US (or equivalent developed country) are either through scholarships/grants or already have a job offer. They do not have any sort of cognitive/emotional load. I'm sure every country allows a greater portion of immigration for competent people (irrespective of their social standing or economic stability) as opposed to those who have wealth/status and not contribute back to their society.

> The second form of selection bias is when the Immigration Officer says yes or no.

How is this "selection bias" and how does it apply to the context of the article we are discussing?

> The first form of selection bias is far more effective at weeding out the "low" earners and ensuring the top earners are pre-selected for immigration.

Why would a "top earner" want to go to the US if he is already a "top earner"? This makes no sense.

> There is a third form of selection bias but that may not help with this conversation, and that's geographical. Crossing an ocean has historically been seen as riskier then crossing land, so that weeds out the risk averse.

I think you are confusing the term "selection bias" as applied to this article with issues faced during immigration.

My question has nothing to do with the problems one faces during immigration. It has more to do with those who have already immigrated and earning substantially more than the natives (according to the article about 117% more). My question is why this gap between the immigrated vs the natives with respect to median income.

Are Indians considered Asians?

Some people say yes in some or all contexts, others say no.

The gap b/w Asian men and white men is the same as the gap b/w white men and white women.

Clearly the only explanation for this is institutionalized racism, gender bias and bigotry. Could you imagine affirmitive action covering white men to close the gap?

IIRC, The UC system has changed its admissions policies in a way that reduces the proportion of admissions based on the metrics that Asians do most well on:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30393117/ns/us_news-life/t/asian-a...

A few decades ago, UC schools were investigated for allegedly being biased against Asians in admissions:

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-11-18/news/mn-452_1_uc-berk...

In practice, many parts of the rhetoric of "diversity" and "inclusion" end up using the same tactics as the jewish quotas that were implemented a hundred years ago in the name of white supremacy.

Resentment and discrimination towards a successful minority is nothing new, only now the resentment is in the name of a rainbow coalition rather than just white people from western europe.

Same thing happening at Ivy League schools. I believe there is a class action lawsuit in progress now.

Despite the lack of content in the article, this post seems have to attracted a few comments. Before everyone comes in here with explanations of "oh it is because Asians work harder, are smarter, and have better culture" argument - thus not only further propagating the harmful model minority stereotype but also implying that certain other races aren't as smart or don't have 'good' culture - I'd like to propose it is simply because of socioeconomic status and selection effect.

Your adult income levels is heavily correlated to the socioeconomic status of the family you grew up in. Asian Americans have the highest average family income out of any major immigrant groups because Asia is a huge place with many wealthy and educated citizens who then decide to immigrate over to America. The selection effect comes from the fact that the people who do immigrate from Asia are usually either wealthy or well educated or both, because the lack of these factors prevent poorer families from doing so. These families then have higher than average socioeconomic status and their children go on to become well educated and get better paying jobs (1). As for why Asian Men are specifically higher earning, we still live in a non post gender world. For an example of institutionalized sexism in tech I would recommend this recent documentary that just came out (2). As a last point, income isn't everything. Asian Americans, though facing less severe issues than other minority groups in America, still have to deal with everyday issues such as the model minority stereotype or with being perceived as the perpetual foreigner.

(1) Education and Immigration - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0745648320. This is a great read about how basically everything people associate with immigrants comes down to socioeconomic status.

(2) http://www.codedocumentary.com/ - Documentary about females and minorities or lack thereof in tech.

I'm afraid the 'asians are smarter, work harder and have better culture' makes a whole lot more sense.

Let's leave US and look at Asia instead - compare performance of Japan/Korea/Taiwan (can also through in Singapore and HK) and more recently China to other countries (Indonesia/Philippines/Malaysia/Thailand etc) post WW2. They all started out dirt poor yet some countries have made tremendous progress while others are still pretty undeveloped.

Oh boy.

Asian Men in america are a anomaly. Its strong selective bias.

Open your borders to all of Asia an see what happens.

I wonder if they're counting the thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds?) of Asian men who work manual labor or the shipping industry in areas like Manhattan's Chinatown or Brooklyn's Sunset Park. Probably not as they're mostly likely paid under the table, but they'd skew results quite a bit.

Yet a disproportionate number of sons of daughters of these laborers are attending Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.

Yep, I am dating one :-) Well, she went to Brooklyn Tech.

Can you explain how Asian men/women in America are an anomaly? Aren't Asian men/women successful in other countries (including their own) as well?

When you only allow the already-successful or already-high-IQ people into the selection pool, don't be surprised when you find that your pull is full of successful high-IQ people. This is called selection bias: the Asians in this study have already been filtered by the immigration process while the white people have not, so it's not a random sampling.

Then how do you explain the same Asians people being successful in other countries where the immigration process is not as strict as USA? By saying that "already-high-IQ" people immigrate to the home country aren't you in effect saying that there is no one in the native homeland with a higher IQ than the immigrating pool? Isn't that a self-defeating argument in itself? Are you saying that there is a preference given to Asians over white people by the employers?

> Then how do you explain the same Asians people being successful in other countries where the immigration process is not as strict as USA?

Since immigration costs money and it's "easier" to stay where you are born, there is no way to escape a selection bias.

> By saying that "already-high-IQ" people immigrate to the home country aren't you in effect saying that there is no one in the native homeland with a higher IQ than the immigrating pool?

No, and I'm not sure how that follows. The argument that I'm defending just asserts that the ones who immigrate are "better" than average in some way.

> Are you saying that there is a preference given to Asians over white people by the employers?

Again, no. The preference is already given by the immigration office.

Look at performance of Chinese all around South Asia - Malaysia, Indonesia. Or just compare Singapore with Malaysia: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gdp+per+person+singapo...

Exactly, most Asians ended up in USA due to their education levels indeed. If a random group of Asians are imported the result will be more realistic.

See my other comment in the GP post. There are a bunch of Asian men who make little or no money (usually under the table) in the US. They're not counting them because they don't report taxes or just out of convenience.

Out of curiosity, by Asian males, do they also include Indian men? It drives me crazy why Indians and people from other nationalities from the subcontinent do not get counted as "asians" in the US.

Not sure if this includes Indian-American statistics, but Indian-Americans are the highest income group in US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

Interesting... subcontinent is definitely part of Asia, but I would have expected criticism the other direction, that "Asian" lumps together too many really distinct groups, not concern that it was not inclusive enough.

Hmong households have slightly lower median incomes than the total US population, for instance.[0]

[0] http://www.hndinc.org/cmsAdmin/uploads/dlc/HND-Census-Report...

>"that "Asian" lumps together too many really distinct groups"

So does white/caucasian, and probably all the other race "colors" as well. I.e. They lump together many different geographically-isolated/defined peoples and cultures into one singular entity for simplicity. And then we're led to believe statistics that are somehow indicative of something regarding that "race".

India is counted as Asian:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/11/the-challeng...

What about Russians, do you consider them asian? The thing is, short of ridiculously complicated, formalized definitions of all races, sub-races, and combinations you're going to have weirdness and misunderstandings. To most people, asian means China/Japan, and/or the accompanying facial-features that are predominant in those areas.

Are all people from Africa black? No, of course not. Are all people from America/Europe white? No, of course not.

So then, why do you want to define the "race" Asian using geography? When all others are based on skin-color/culture/identiy, for lack of a better way of simply-defining it.

At this point, I'm half-expecting someone to correct me about my definition/description of races. Or perhaps be told about some sort of already-formalized, government-endorsed definition of one of the races above that I got wrong.

It's the modern version of 'mongoloid' which has gone out of fashion.

Interestly enough, in the UK 'asian' refers strictly to people from India/Pakistan.

From now on, I'm going to downvote any article that exploits shallow politics and clikbait titles. If the writer thinks his work needs such tricks to gain attention, it's not worth reading.

The article itself is very shallow, and compares people by skin color AND home continent. Apples and oranges. Except, 'Asian' is a whole casket of different fruits.

> 'Asian' is a whole casket of different fruits

White isn't?

Edit: ""White" refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa. It includes people who indicated their race(s) as "White" or reported entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan or Caucasian."

"many of the ethnic groups classified as white by the U.S. Census, such as Jewish-Americans, Arab-Americans, and Hispanics or Latinos"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans

> 'Asian' is a whole casket of different fruits

Black isn't?

Latin isn't?

Women isn't?

>> All groups trail white men in earnings — except Asian men. They made 117 percent of what white men earned in 2015:

Why not just say:

>> All groups trail asian men in earnings — They made 117 percent of what white men earned in 2015

Because the point of the article is to talk about how white men are in second place according to their metrics?

Your version provides less information - it does not say that there are no other groups between Asian men and white men on earning scale.

As others have pointed out, Asians in America benefit from a sort of selection bias, if you're looking at East Asians whose families immigrated as doctors/academics/etc. Other Asian groups don't benefit as much, AFAIK. My own family came over as war refugees, which is a sort of survivor bias but not the same...it took me awhile to figure out why none of us kids were particularly great at school growing up.

If you want break it down further Indian American's are the highest earning group in America. Probably because so Indian American especially 2nd generation one are doctors, dentists, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

And suddenly 85% of the content of left leaning blogs and media is outdated :)

On a more serious note - lumping coastal white males and mid-country ones into a single group, while it is obvious that it is a bi-modal distribution is not properly conducted statistics.

It will be interesting to see white v asian male showdown by geographic areas and professions - and then you can claim outearning.

Do they even out-earn people of Jewish descent? Honest question. I thought 10% of billionaires are Jewish, or something like that.

It would be interesting to see the geographic distribution of Asian population in US. I assume that there aren't that many people of Asian descent in US and I'd expect they're mostly located in big cities. That would certainly affect the median income.

Keep this up and the villains on Lifetime will be Asian men instead of white men.

Yeah but that would involve being willing to cast Asian men in leading roles and romantic interests on TV and in movies.

Spoiler: Asian males, who have higher IQs and commit less crime than white males, earn more than white males.

As no white male on HN has ever worked with an Asian male, this will of course be a total shock to all readers.

Quit trolling. You know its selection bias.

It's pretty well established that East Asians have significantly higher average IQs than Europeans. High IQ predicts low crime rate. Ashkenazi Jews and high-caste Indians are other examples of demographics with much higher IQs on average and also lower crime rate and higher average income. Selective immigration accounts for some of this but is not the whole story.

Citation?

I'm sorry, but I've never heard this. Can you provide a source? IQ as a test has been criticized for cultural bias:

http://wilderdom.com/personality/intelligenceCulturalBias.ht...

http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/09/intelligence-testi...

Additionally, the very measure of IQ is based around the performance of the mean (where 100 is legged as standard)

How can groups be measured across race with a culturally biased test and NOT have the validity of the measure questioned?

I've got a lot of trouble believing there are any real studies that would make such a claim as you've made.

First, we have culture fair IQ tests. Raven's Progressive Matrices is entirely symbolic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices... very hard to see how it could be culturally biased, and if it is, why do Europeans do so poorly compared to Chinese and Japanese people?

Regarding differences in average IQ, Ashkenazi Jews are the most stark example. It is indisputable that they score roughly a standard deviation above gentiles:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606...

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...

Some claim this is purely cultural. But I think genetics is a much more parsimonious explanation. Ashkenazi Jews are about 2% of the population yet 22% of nobel prize winners are Ashkenazi:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence#... The difference in culture between secular jews and gentiles is just not enough to account for that.

Also note, I think acknowledging this fact prevents racism. Antisemites love pointing out that jews are overrepresented in many high status occupations, postulating crazy conspiracy theories for why this is the case. But once you acknowledge the IQ gap, we have an entirely benign explanation and it's evident that these conspiracy theories hold no water.

> First, we have culture fair IQ tests. Raven's Progressive Matrices is entirely symbolic: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices.... very hard to see how it could be culturally biased, and if it is, why do Europeans do so poorly compared to Chinese and Japanese people?

So one hypothesis is that the test is unbiased and that Chinese & Japanese people have a higher IQ than Europeans?

Perhaps another hypothesis is that Kanji based languages with a high number of glyphs and characters gives a lifetime of practice to Chinese and Japanese people who are then more adept amd practised at specially rotating random or nonsense glyphs.

While the Ashkenazi Jews' IQ differences are interesting, your conclusions remain spurious and based on correlation & epidemiology.

One of the studies you cite for example examines a cohort of Jews who settles in Britain from Germany between 1908 and 1940. Wealth and connections could account for a massive "selection bias"

Additionally "high caste Indian" would also speak to other possible confounding variables.

For example: a very high socioeconomic status appears to be a common thread to all your examples which don't point to race as the dependent variable.

It's all interesting, but I'm not sure the interpretation you're presenting really stands up.

Raven's Progressive Matrices aren't really based on spacial rotation, but an interesting point. One thing we might look for to test this idea would be Raven's Matrices tests of illiterate Chinese farmers. They were developed in the late 30s, so it's possible such studies were done. Though we'd need to be wary of the Flynn effect.

We see similar IQ differences in Ashkenazi immigrants to America and Canada, and these differences have persisted over multiple generations. You would expect regression to the mean if it is purely a selection effect. Also, selection effects can't explain 27% of United States Nobel prize winners in the 20th century, 25% of Fields Medal winners, and 25% of ACM Turing Award winners, for obvious reasons. 10x overrepresentation isn't something selective immigration can explain when the the global Ashkenazi population is so small.

Wealth is tied with cognitive ability. Look at Jewish immigrants in the 1930s, most of them were extremely poor, but their children grew up to be disproportionately successful. Most people desire wealth. Intelligence is your ability to realize your desires. Intelligent people will tend to acquire more wealth than less intelligent people. As intelligence is highly heritable, this has class implications that can't be ignored.

Regarding Progressive Matrices, you could try comparing Japanese and Chinese, who use kanji; Koreans, who use hangul, which is derived from kanji; and Vietnamese, who use the Latin alphabet (albeit with a lot of diacritics).

Do you have sources for any of this? And they'd need to be pretty high quality sources too since there are cultural biases at play here which could skew results.

Please change the clickbait title to "Asians are the top earners in USA now" or something.

"One group you won't believe outearns white men."

That is the title though. We don't normally change titles when they are correct.

Then can we get the post to change the title? The whole thing could be properly summed up in the title.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."

And sadly it seems like half of the titles these days are linkbait. And this article is from the Washington Post! We aren't even talking about nautilus or one of those sites.

"White men hate them!"

If you look at the state of the world, with brexit & trump driven in a large part by overt racism, this is, very sadly, more true than just a funny turn on a well known phrase.

(The callback of course to "weight loss doctors hate him" or any number of similar headlines)

> ”If you look at the state of the world, with brexit & trump driven in a large part by overt racism“

I think it mischaracterizes both Brexit and Trump's popularity to attribute it to ”overt racism“. 'Overt nationalism' is probably more accurate.

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