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