The Hindu Business Line : Indian Americans more educated, more wealthy

IT is generally known that Indian community in the US is both wealthy and well educated. But what is not so well known is that gender discrimination prevails there too.

According to a comprehensive report brought out by the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA) on the Indian American community, based on the Census 2000 data, Indian Americans are two and half times more likely to have a bachelor's degree than the general population (60.93 per cent versus 24.4 pr cent); "three and a half times more likely to have a professional degree or a master's degree, and four and three quarters times more likely to hold a doctorate degree."

Indians in the US also have a significantly higher school enrolment rate and against 7.8 per cent of the general population, 5.18 per cent of Indians are enrolled in a college or graduate school. At the time of the 2000 Census, 57.3 per cent of Indian Americans in the age group of 18 to 24 years attended college or graduate school.

However, this rosy picture pales when you bring in the gender factor, because Indian American women cannot boast of such high levels of educational qualifications. "Indian American women are more than twice as likely not to have any schooling. Additionally, Indian American women are less likely than Indian American men to achieve all categories of degrees," says the report, pointing out that this gender disparity is not so marked in the general American population. "For instance, in the general population, men are only 3.78 per cent more likely than women to attain a master's degree. However, in the Indian American community, that discrepancy jumps - Indian American men are 47.67 per cent more likely than Indian American women to attain a master's degree."

Again, when it comes to employment and income generation, Indian American men do far better than women. According to the 2000 census, the median household income for Indian American households is $61,322, against $41,994 for the general population.

To harden the already hard feelings on the outsourcing front and Indians taking away the jobs of Americans, the report says that the unemployment rate for the Indian American community is lower than the unemployment rate for the general population. As of the 2000 Census, the Indian community had an unemployment rate of just 1.75 per cent, against the 1.93 per cent unemployment rate in the general population.

"However, a significant income gender gap exists. In the general population, the median earnings for men are 55.39 per cent greater than that of women. In the Indian American population, the median earnings for men are 74.48 per cent greater than that of women," says the report. The gender gap is not so bad in other communities; in the Chinese American community, this gap is 40.76 per cent.

At 1.9 million, the Indian American population has roughly doubled between the 1990 and the 2000 Census. In 1990, Indian Americans accounted for 11.8 per cent of all Asian Americans; in 2000 this figure went up to 16 per cent. Indian Americans are the third largest Asian American group, after Chinese Americans (2.7 million) and Filipino Americans, says the report.

Despite the Indian American community being better off than the general population in the US, there are significant pockets of poverty within the Indian American community and these are in the districts of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Also, Indian Americans receive considerably less public assistance than the general population, and the report says that the IACPA hopes to address the issue of reaching more social security to the Indian community and "represent its needs to policymakers".