Asian Percentages in Richest and Poorest Areas of the US
By Goldsea Staff | 27 Oct, 2025

The concentrations of Asian Americans contrast sharply between the richest and poorest communities in the US.

Asians make up about 6.8% of the US population.  But that national average doesn't convey the vast differences in Asian concentrations among various types of communities.  To get a clearer picture of precisely where Asian Americans live, we looked at the richest and poorest of US Census Designated Places (CPD), along with Asian share of their populations.  

Piedmont, California contains the highest concentration of Asian Americans among the 20 wealthiest communities of the US.  (Image by Gemini)

We were surprised to find such extreme polarization between affluent areas and poorer areas.  While Asians made up 34% and 25.1%, respectively, of the populations of exclusive enclaves like Piedmont, California (pop. 11,270) and Short Hills, New Jersey (pop. 14,422), they were literally invisible in the lowest-income CPDs like Little River, California and Villaneuva, New Mexico.   Even cities like Youngstown, Ohio and Gary, Indiana have less than 1% of the population made up of Asians.

The tech hub of Sunnyvale, California is part of the San Jose metro area which contains the highest concentration of Asian Americans among major metro areas. (Image by Gemini)

To confirm that the tendency of Asians to make their lives in the most affluent places, we also got some stats for the top 20 wealthiest metro areas.  Not surprisingly Asian Americans made up over a third of the populations at the top of the list — San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (35.9%) and San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley (34.2%) — while being far less prominent at the cities near the bottom of the list — metros that are still among the nation's top 20 most affluent — like Salt Lake City, Utah (4.5%) and Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, Arizona (4.3%).

Note on Data:

• Per Capita Income (PCI) is the total income of a geographic area divided by its total population.

• Median Household Income (MHI) is the income level at which half the households in an area earn more and half earn less. The $$$250,000+ listed for many locations indicates the income exceeded the reporting limit in the census data.

• Locations: Many of the top per capita income areas are small, affluent suburbs or CDPs (Census-Designated Places), not large principal cities like New York or Chicago. They often represent neighborhoods with a high concentration of wealthy, low-density households, which naturally skews the per capita figure extremely high.

• The Percentage Asian Population column is included as requested, showing that many of the highest-income suburbs, particularly those in California, Washington, and New York, have a significant portion of Asian residents, often well above the national average of approximately 6–7%.

📊 Definitions of Wealth Metrics

• Per Capita Income (PCI): This is the most direct measure of wealth distribution among all individuals, including children and non-working adults, within an area. A very high PCI often indicates a high concentration of wealth in a relatively small number of households.

• Median Household Income (MHI): This is the primary measure used to assess the typical living standard in an area. It represents the income of a single household unit. The median is used to avoid skewing by extremely high earners (unlike the average household income).

• Percentage Asian Population: The data consistently shows that Asian Americans as a group have the highest median household income of any racial group in the US, which contributes to the high-income metrics in the communities where they are most concentrated.

Would you like me to find the same statistics for the principal cities of the largest metropolitan areas (like New York City or San Francisco) instead of the small, high-wealth suburbs?

🇺🇸 Poorest U.S. Cities by Income

While a definitive and consistently ranked list of the 20 poorest cities in the U.S. based on per capita income that also includes the percentage of Asians is not directly available, combining data from various reports on low-income areas allows for a partial ranking of cities with the lowest per capita and median household income.

The data below focuses on selected cities and towns frequently cited in reports for having low incomes and provides the requested metrics where available. Please note that "city" definitions can vary between reports (e.g., city proper vs. metropolitan area), and data vintage impacts the specific figures.

Above tables provided by Gemini based on US Census data.  Table below provided by Copilot based on Wikipedia data.

Here’s a ranked table of the 20 wealthiest U.S. metro areas by per capita income, now including median household income and Asian population percentage. San Jose leads in both income and Asian representation.

🏙️ Top 20 Wealthiest U.S. Metro Areas by Per Capita Income

1 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA141, 516146,143 35.9%  

2 Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT 125,185  ~110,000  ~5%  

3 San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA 122,544 146,872 34.2% 

4 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD 100,070 109,300 11.3%

5 Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 93,423 95,858 9.7% 

6 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 91,482 124,715 18.3%

7 New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ 89,063 ~85,000 14.6%  

8 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 82,009 ~80,00012.1% 

9 San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA 81,426 106,007 17.2%  

10 Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO 78,211~85,000 4.1%  

11 Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX 76,765 93,004 8.1%  

12 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 75,321~90,000 6.2% 

13 Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI 74,812 ~82,000 6.9%

14 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE 73,204~80,000 7.8%  

15 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 72,881 92,274 8.5% 

16 Raleigh-Cary, NC 71,932~88,000 6.4%  

17 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA 70,421~85,000 6.8%  

18 Salt Lake City, UT 69,812~84,000 4.3% 

19 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 68,943 94,066 5.2% 

20 Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ 67,214 ~82,000 4.5%