There are 25.8 million Asian Americans living in the US, making up 7.7% of the population. Among them, 3.6 million identify as Asian in combination with another race.
Asian Americans are sometimes grouped with Pacific Islanders under the “AAPI” umbrella, and the joint Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month is celebrated annually in May. The AAPI population is the fastest growing racial group in the US, with a population that nearly doubled from 2000 to 2023.
The demographics of Asian Americans vary drastically across ethnic groups. Taiwanese and Indian Americans have the highest educational and income outcomes, while Southeast Asian Americans have lower incomes and educational attainment.
Which are the largest Asian American ethnic groups in the United States?
Six Asian ethnicities make up 80% of the Asian American populations and each have US populations exceeding 1 million:
- Chinese Americans: 21%
- Indian Americans: 19%
- Filipino Americans: 17%
- Vietnamese Americans: 9%
- Korean Americans: 8%
- Japanese Americans: 6%
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Which states have the highest Asian American populations?
Three states account for 44% of the Asian American population: California, Nevada, and Washington. The states with the largest share of Asian Americans are Hawaii (57%), California (18%), and Washington (13%).
How do Asian Americans’ education levels and income differ by ethnicity?
Forty-five percent of Asian Americans over age 25 have a graduate or professional degree, compared with 14% of the total population. About 80% of Taiwanese Americans have a bachelor’s, the highest of any Asian ethnicity. At 77%, Indian Americans make up the next highest percentage. Laotian Americans have the lowest educational attainment among Asian ethnicities.
The median household income for Asian American households is $104,646 a year, nearly 30% higher than the US median of $74,755 (in 2022 inflation-adjusted dollars).
Six Asian American ethnic groups have median household income above $100,000, triple the amount of households over last year.
How do Asian-American family structures differ by ethnicity?
Asian-Americans tend to be more family-based than the average US household. Seventy-one percent of Asian households are made up of families — instead of people living alone or with unrelated people — compared with 64% of all households.
With an average of 3.3 people, Asian American families are also larger than the average of all US families at 3.1.
The average Hmong, Burmese, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or Nepalese American family in the US all have more than four members. Taiwanese and Japanese American families are the smallest among all groups, with an average size of 3.1.
How does the government define Asian American, and where does the data come from?
In 1997, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) outlined the current standards for federal data on race and ethnicity that separated the “Asian or Pacific Islander” category into "Asian" and "Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.”
The Census Bureau, in accordance with this, defines an Asian person as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.”
A sample census form
The 2022 American Community Survey provides the latest available demographic data on Asian Americans, with datasets for each ethnicity: one that includes multiracial people and another that excludes them. This article includes those who identify as an Asian ethnicity in combination with others. It also lists Taiwanese Americans separately from Chinese Americans.
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Page sources and methodology
All of the data on the page was sourced directly from government agencies. The analysis and final review was performed by USAFacts.
Census Bureau
American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates (2023 and 2022)
Office of Management and Budget
Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity
