Asians have the largest income gap in America according to a new study.
In a report by the Pew Research Center, Asians were found to have the largest income gap among ethnicities.
The study, which looked at incomes from the 1970 to 1960, found that at the beginning of the period, Asian Americans actually had the smallest gap and black Americans had the largest.
However, in the period, the gap between the lowest earning and highest learning Asians in America nearly doubled.
Asians are the highest earning racial and ethnic group in the U.S but the wealth is not shared by all of them.
“The distribution of income among Asians transformed from being one of the most equal to being the most unequal among America’s major racial and ethnic groups,” the report found.
Income distribution in America widened 27% from 1970 to 2016. In 2016, the wealthiest had 8.7 times as much income as those near the bottom – $109,578 compared with $12,523.
The report added that income inequality has detrimental effects on society. “An increase in income inequality matters because of the potential for social and economic consequences,” the reported read. ‘People at the lower rungs of the income ladder may experience diminished economic opportunity and mobility and have less political influence.”
