Top Ten Asian Groups in the U.S. (Population in 2000 and % of Asian population)
This panel shows some detail on Asian Americans. In the 2000 Census, this group was 3.6% of the total population, some 10.2 million people. Shown here are the top 11 groups that comprise 95% of the Asian population.
Some clarifications. This category is often reported as Asians and Pacific Islanders. That population, in 2000, as reported in Current Population Reports, was 10.8 million and was 3.8% of the population. The Census also reports a higher number of Asians, 11.9 million. This number includes people of combined race or combined Asian origin, e.g., "Pakistani and Nepalese." The lower number is more accurate, because the combined population is, in effect, tallied twice or more times, because a person reporting as in the example above, is counted twice, once as a Pakistani, once as a Nepalese.
The Asian population increased 48.3% between 1990 and 2000 (an increase nearly 4 times as high as that of the U.S. population as a whole, which increased 13.2%). Population growth was most dramatic in the 1970s and 1980s (see Chapter 1, Who We Are).
Some 7.2 million of the Asian population is foreign born; it has a high citizenship rate (47%) second only to those born in Europe (52%).
Top ranking concentrations of Asians, by region and states is shown in the table:
Leading Region and Top Three States in Asian Population
| Area | Population 1990 | Population 2000 | Change in Population | % of Total 2000 popul. |
| West | 3,734,191 | 5,003,611 | 1,269,420 | 7.9 |
| California | 2,735,060 | 3,697,513 | 962,453 | 10.9 |
| New York State | 689,303 | 1,044,976 | 355,673 | 5.5 |
| Texas | 311,918 | 562,319 | 250,401 | 2.7 |
The four states with the lowest percent of Asians were West Virginia and Montana (both 0.5%) and North Dakota and Wyoming (both 0.6%) in 2000.
The five cities with the most Asians were New York, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, and Honolulu. These cities, with a combined population of 1.8 million Asians in 2000, hosted 18% of the Asian population in the United States.
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. "The Asian Population: 2000." Census 2000 Brief. United States Census 2000. Note: The source separately lists populations of those originating in Mainland China and on Taiwan.
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