ASIAN AMERICAN
MEDIAWATCH






MONEY, MEDIA &
The Asian American Image
PAGE 2 OF 4

his elementary proposition serves as the basis for the most important mechanism we can use to upgrade our media image.

     As of 2002 11 million Asians live in this country, the population of Hong Kong and Singapore combined. Our collective income surpasses that of Hong Kong's 6.5 million citizens, Taiwan's 24 million, Thailand's 57 million or Indonesia's 200 million. If Asian Americans formed our own state, it would have the fifth biggest economy. If we created our own nation, our GNP would rank 15th in the world.

     That's impressive enough. What makes us an even more important segment of American consumers is our above-average incomes, educational levels and spending habits. According to updated estimates of latest available U.S. Census figures, the median Asian household income is about $49,000 a year, considerably higher than the $44,000 national median. Asian households outearn even white households by 16%.

     Asians are 14% of California's population but 38% of the enrollment at the state's top ten universities. Asians outnumber Whites at UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Irvine, the four biggest campuses of the elite University of California system. Even at private universities like Stanford and USC, Asians make up a disproporationate 26% and 37%, respectively. The figures are almost as impressive at elite East Coast colleges like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton and MIT where Asians average 14-30% of the student bodies.
     Our high educational levels translate into the high rate of economic success that Asian Americans have enjoyed. Despite complaints about the glass ceiling at upper levels of corporate management, Census figures show that young Asians are entering professional and managerial positions at twice the national rate--46% versus 24%.

     Those numbers become even more impressive in light of the fact that 58% of all Asians came here after 1969 when the U.S. was opened up to significant Asian immigration for the first time in half a century. This suggests that Asian income levels will take a big jump in the coming decade as substantial numbers of young American-educated Asians finally settle into their careers. Based on the numbers graduating from California universities, as of 2008 Asians make up 34% of the state's under-40 professional, managerial and entrepreneurial population.

     These raw numbers only begin to suggest the importance of Asian consumers for companies that sell homes, airline tickets, luxury cars, personal computers, high-end consumer electronics, educational products, designer-brand fashion, premium liquor and tobacco.

     Developers of new upper-middle-class housing in Orange County and the San Gabriel Valley often find that half or more of their homes are purchased by Asians.

     A 1997 survey of sales managers of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Acura dealerships in both northern and southern California revealed that 15-85% of sales were to Asians, with an average of 40%. An eyeball survey of California streets and parking lots will verify that Asians are indeed behind the wheels of a disproportionate number of prestige cars, domestic and imported. PAGE 3

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As of the year 2008 Asians make up 34% of California's under-40 professional, managerial and entrepreneurial population.