How does Indian American income and wealth compare with other groups?

Income: the Census comparison

The Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey profiles let us compare groups on the same basis^1,2:

Group (alone)	Median household income	Per capita income	Bachelor's or higher (25+)	Poverty rate
Asian Indian	$165,721	$76,212	78.8%	6.7%
Taiwanese	$144,743	$83,810	81.5%	8.5%
Filipino	$117,783	$49,331	52.6%	6.5%
Pakistani	$111,719	$46,649	61.8%	11.0%
Chinese	$111,125	$65,180	61.3%	12.0%
Korean	$102,682	$62,787	63.4%	9.8%
Japanese	$100,156	$62,797	56.7%	7.6%
White, not Hispanic	$87,572	$53,079	40.8%	9.1%
Hispanic (any race)	$72,574	$29,435	21.5%	16.2%
Black	$56,706	$32,514	26.9%	20.3%
All US	$81,604	$45,256	36.8%	12.1%

On household income, Asian Indians are first by a clear margin. On per capita income, which divides total income by every person including children, Taiwanese Americans are higher, partly because Asian Indian households are larger (2.85 people versus 2.39) and younger¹. For the headline ranking, see are Indian Americans the richest ethnic group.

What HeyAlbert data shows

Indian vs Chinese Americans

The two largest Asian origin groups make an instructive pair. In 2024 their populations were similar, about 5.1 million Asian Indian alone and 4.8 million Chinese alone¹. Yet the Asian Indian median household income ($165,721) was about $55,000 higher than the Chinese American median ($111,125)¹. Chinese Americans are older on average (median age 40.8 versus 36.1), more likely to have arrived before 2000, and far more unequal: Pew found Chinese American households had the widest gap between top and bottom earners of any Asian origin group in 2022, while Indian Americans were the top earners at both the 10th and 90th percentiles^1,4. Differences in the routes each group's immigrants have used, including the share arriving on skilled-worker visas, are part of the explanation; see the H-1B visa and Indian American wealth.

Indian Americans and other South Asian groups

Asian Indians make up the large majority of the roughly 6.4 million people who identified as South Asian alone in 2024, which is why the South Asian median ($151,905) sits close to the Indian figure¹. Other South Asian groups have lower, though still mostly above-average, incomes: Pakistani households had a median of $111,719, Sri Lankan $111,484, Nepalese $102,046 and Bangladeshi $76,365¹. Those gaps track differences in immigration routes, time in the US and education, which we explore in Indian American education levels.

Indian vs white Americans

Asian Indian households had a median income almost twice that of non-Hispanic white households in 2024 ($165,721 versus $87,572)¹. Education explains much of this: 46.4% of Asian Indian adults held a graduate or professional degree, against 16.2% of non-Hispanic white adults¹. Wealth is a different story in some respects. White households are older (median age 44.4 versus 36.1) and more likely to own their homes (73.3% versus 63.0%), and older households have had longer to build and inherit wealth¹. Our article on Indian American household net worth covers what wealth surveys show.

Indian vs Jewish Americans

This comparison is often asked about, but the data sources differ. The Census Bureau does not ask about religion, so the main source on Jewish Americans is Pew Research Center's 2020 survey. It found that 23% of Jewish adults reported family incomes of $200,000 or more, compared with 4% of all US adults in the same survey⁵. Census data shows 30.1% of Asian Indian households with incomes of $200,000 or more in 2017–2021, versus 9.5% of all US households⁶. Because one is a survey of adults and the other counts households, the numbers are not directly comparable. What both show is that each group is several times more likely than average to be in the top income bracket.

Wealth: what the surveys can say

National wealth surveys report Asian Americans as one group. In the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, Asian American families had a median net worth of about $536,000 and a mean of about $1.83 million, compared with about $285,000 and $1.37 million for white families³. The Census Bureau found 27.5% of non-Hispanic Asian households held $1 million or more at the end of 2023, versus 22.2% of non-Hispanic white households⁷. A 2016 Los Angeles study, one of the few to separate origin groups, estimated median household wealth at $592,000 for Japanese Americans, $460,000 for Asian Indians, $408,200 for Chinese Americans and $355,000 for white households⁸.

For income spread within the community, see how income is distributed among Indian Americans, and for what drives the differences, why Indian Americans are wealthier than average.