Vinayak Barot
NEW DELHI, Oct 2: A research team at the Johns Hopkins’ Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies has found that over 6% Indian-Americans are living below the poverty line. As per an estimate, 4.2 million Indians are living in the USA and about six percent of them are facing poverty.
The report was released during the Indiaspora Philanthropy Summit 2020 on Thursday and according to Devesh Kapur and Jashan Bajwaat report, the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to still increase poverty among members of the community.
On the report Devesh Kapur said, “The incident of poverty is greater among Bengali and Punjabi speaking Indian Americans and about one-third are not in the labour force and about a fifth of them are not American citizens.”
A founder of Indiaspora, MR Rangaswami said “with this report, we wanted to draw attention to the plight of the most underprivileged Indian Americans.”
“With COVID-19 wrecking health and economic havoc, this is an appropriate moment to raise awareness and discuss the issue of poverty that exists in our otherwise affluent community. We hope that the report will lead to an increased focus on this topic, followed by targeted measures to make a positive difference,” Rangaswami added.
During detailed analysis, Kapur has also found that Indian Americans are still less likely to be living in poverty compared to white, Black and Hispanic Americans.
