A few days ago I posted data showing that “Asians” in Virginia are a diverse group whose country of origin include India, Pakistan, China, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines and many other nations. Some groups are very well-to-do, some middling. But none, regardless of the circumstances of how they arrived here, are poor.
In the past, I have attributed part of the superior educational and income performance of “Asians” to the strong, family-oriented culture of the diverse immigrant groups lumped into that broader racial classification. Recently, while poking around Virginia adoption data, I have uncovered one measure of how Asian family values make life better for children.
While “Asians” constitute more than 5.5% of Virginia’s population, only 8 of 1,751 children in Virginia’s foster care system are classified as up for adoption. That’s less than one half of a percent — or less than one-tenth the rate of the non-Asian population. In the pie chart above, Asian children are visible only as a sliver.
Children enter the foster care system when they have been abused or neglected. While some Asian children of Tiger Moms might complain about the stress of high expectations, they aren’t being beaten, starved, or sexually assaulted, as happens all too often in other ethnicities. “Asians” in Virginia have done a better job raising their children, at least as measured by this metric of social pathology.
What is the reason? Are “Asians” unique? Or have these groups just not resided long enough in the United States to fully absorb our corrosive culture? Will future generations of “Asians” be as dysfunctional as other Americans? We’ll see.
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