Do Native-Born Asian Americans Face a Glass Ceiling? Evidence from the Current Population Surveys

Arthur Sakamoto, University of Texas at Austin
Keng-Loong Yap, University of Texas at Austin

The Asian American population is growing rapidly, and additional information about the socioeconomic outcomes of this demographic group is needed in order to provide a broader perspective on the nature of racial inequality in modern American society. In this paper, we investigate the glass-ceiling hypothesis which states that Asian Americans face a net racial disadvantage in obtaining employment in executive/managerial positions in large firms. We pool the Current Populations Surveys from 1994 to 2002, and estimate multinomial logistic regression models to provide systematic evidence about the glass-ceiling hypothesis which heretofore has not been investigated with nationally representative data using multivariate statistical methods. Our analysis also investigates whether Asian Americans are disadvantaged in terms of employment in the unionized sector for blue-collar occupations.