State of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

/ November 15, 2015 / 530 Comments / Publication

AAPIData-CAP-report copy

State of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Series: 

A Multifaceted Portrait of  a Growing Population

Karthick Ramakrishnan & Farah Z. Ahmad

Center for American Progress

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, or AAPIs, are the two fastest-growing populations in the United States, growing by an average of 46 percent and 40 percent, respectively, between 2000 and 2010, compared with the nationwide average growth of 10 percent during the same time period.1 The rapid growth of AAPIs, propelled in large part by immigration, is one of the demographic shifts currently changing the face of the United States. The majority of the United States is projected to be people of color by 2043,2 and it is imperative that we understand the diversity among these communities. Yet despite the remarkable growth of AAPIs, there is a significant gap in what is known about these communities. Part of this gap is due to the lack of centralized and accessible data across outcomes, rendering it difficult to make comprehensive sense of policy-relevant data.

In this series, the Center for American Progress and AAPI Data bring together the most salient data points on AAPIs in 10 reports on a range of topics, including public opinion, civic participation, immigration, language needs, labor-market outcomes, and consumer and business activity. In doing so, we provide comparisons between AAPIs and other racial groups in the United States, as well as comparisons within the AAPI community by detailed origin—ranging from Chinese Americans and Bangladeshi Americans to Native Hawaiians and Tongan Americans.