AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community

We use nationally representative data and carefully specified statistical models to investigate the glass-ceiling hypothesis according to which Asian Americans are less likely to be managers in administrative hierarchies. We focus our analysis on native-born Asian Americans who have not received much attention in previous research. The results indicate that native-born Asian American men are at least as likely as white men to be employed as managers in the government sector even after adjusting for education and other demographic characteristics. For both men and women, there is only limited evidence that native-born Asian Americans are significantly less likely than whites to be employed as managers in the non-self-employed private sector. Although a few notable differences by specific Asian ethnicity are discussed, we interpret our findings as indicating that, at least among the native-born Asian Americans, the glass-ceiling may not be so widely pervasive at the occupational level. Future research should investigate the glass-ceiling hypothesis using data that focus more specifically on the higher levels of managerial hierarchies.