Year of immigration and socioeconomic status: A comparative study of three Asian populations in California

This study is the first attempt to search for the relationship between socioeconomic characteristics and year of immigration among Asian populations in the United States for the purpose of examining the feasibility of the ‘late arrival hypothesis’ that late arrival accounts for one's low socioeconomic status at the place of destination. In order to discuss additionally how differences in socioeconomic characteristics among Asian ethnic groups occur, Japanese were selected as an early immigrated Asian population, Korean as an intermediately immigrated one, and Vietnamese as a late immigrant. The data for this study are from the 5 percent public use sample of the 1980 Census of Population for the State of California.