Research highlights

An early sociological view in the United States, traceable to Edward Alsworth Ross (1866–1951), was that Asian American immigrants had lower standards for their children’s education than Whites. According to this reasoning, it was not until the Civil Rights Movement that the socioeconomic profiles of Asian Americans began to improve, leading to a new well-educated, “model minority” generation. With recently released linked 1900–1940 full-count U.S. Census microdata, we challenge this view with new evidence on the intergenerational mobility of native-born Asian Americans before the Civil Rights Movement. We find that Chinese and Japanese Americans who grew up during 1882–1943, a period of anti-Asian policies in the U.S. (for example, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Gentleman’s Agreement), exhibited exceptionally high educational mobility amid these policies. However, their higher educational mobility failed to translate into higher occupational mobility. The discrepancy between educational and occupational mobility suggests labor market discrimination was at work for Asian Americans prior to the Civil Rights Movement.

Previous studies find that Asian American parents enforce a strict education-centered success frame upon their children. However, there is limited research on the actual standards of successful childrearing from the perspective of parents. Drawing on in-depth interviews with middle-class parents of Chinese and Indian descent in New Jersey (N = 44) conducted between December 2020 and January 2022, I contest the conception of a unidirectional parental assimilation process that presumes White middle-class families to be the default destination for assimilation. I argue that middle-class Asian American parenting can be better understood as an “inclusive assimilation” process whereby parents aim for a well-rounded education for their children but, similarly to Black and Latinx parents, enrich the concept of well-roundedness touted by White parents with racial socialization efforts in the face of the rise in anti-Asian violence observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Parental spending is an essential measure of parenting styles and is crucial in the intergenerational transmission of advantage. Popular media outlets portray Asian Americans as a “model minority” who invest heavily in education. Past literature on racial spending gaps for children often does not include Asians. A limited number of studies that have examined Asian–White spending gaps focus predominantly on savings and spending for college. Using nationally representative Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) Public Use Microdata 2009­–2022, this study examines K–12 spending gaps between Asian American and White families and how race interacts with class in affecting parental spending. I find that Asian households outspend Whites overall. A detailed analysis of three academic and three enrichment expenses shows that although Asians spend more on recreational lessons and tutoring, Whites outspend Asians on sports and cultural activities. The spending gap on tutoring is most prominent among households with a graduate degree, not among families with a high school education or below, where the Asian–White achievement gap is the most salient. Considering the increasing weight of home choices in determining the quality of public K­­–12 education, this study also examines the racial spending gap on housing. A difference-in-difference analysis suggests that Asian households across the educational spectrum spend more on housing for the sake of K–12 children. This spending gap is the most salient among families without a college degree and those with a graduate degree.

This article considers the consequences of asset-based accumulation for household income factors and social class structure in twenty-nine countries from 1998-2016. Are financialization, asset-based welfare institutions, and rising real estate returns fueling a growing class of petit rentiers in capitalist economies? That is, households who accrue more than a trivial share of income from capital rather than labor or government transfers. The analysis draws on the Luxembourg Income Study data. Contrary to expectations, most countries saw declines in the share of households who accrue more than 10%, or 20% of income from assets. Estimates from correlated random effects models indicate that financialization is associated with between-country differences in the size of the petit rentier, but not within-country change over time. The decline of the petit rentier can be partly explained by declining interest rates, which reduces income from bank savings.