Pakistani-Americans - Economics and Education

Economics and Education

The Pakistani American community today lives in a comfortable middle-class, upper-middle-class and wealthy-class lifestyles. Many Pakistani Americans follow the residence pattern set by others that when they increase their wealth, they are able to own their own businesses; including restaurants, groceries, clothing and appliance stores, newspaper booths, and travel agencies. It is common to include members of the extended and immediate family in the business. The Pakistani American community is said to be philanthropic, research shows that in the year 2002 the community gave close to US$ 1 Billion in philanthropic activities (including value of volunteered time). An increasing number of Pakistani Americans work in the medical field. The Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America, APPNA, has been meeting in various locations across the United States for the past 30 years. There are more than 15,000 doctors practicing medicine in America who are from Pakistani decent. Pakistan is the fourth highest source of IMG doctors in the U.S. and they are chiefly concentrated in New York, California, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois. Pakistan is also the fourth highest source of foreign dentists licensed in the United States. US congressmen and congresswomen have lauded the contributions of Pakistani medical professionals to the country's healthcare system. Pakistani Americans tend to follow the residence pattern set by other Americans, in that they move to more affluent suburbs as their prosperity and wealth increases. Members of the community believe in the symbolic importance of owning homes; accordingly, Pakistani Americans tend to save money and make other monetary sacrifices earlier on in order to purchase their own homes as soon as possible. Members of the family and the larger community tend to take care of each other, and to assist in times of economic need. Hence, it would be more common to turn to a community member for economic assistance rather than to a government agency. This leads to relatively low levels of Pakistani-Americans on welfare and public assistance. According to the 2000 census the mean household income in the United States in 2002 was $57,852 annually, whereas for Asian households, which includes Pakistanis this was $70,047. A separate study conducted by the American Community Survey in 2005, showed the mean and median incomes for Pakistani male full-time workers were US$59,310 and US$42,718 - respectively compared to the average male American full-time workers' mean and median incomes of US$56,724 and US$41,965 - respectively. There is also incidence of poverty in the Pakistani community and in particular around new immigrants that migrated from less privileged backgrounds. These migrants tend to take low-paying jobs involving manual or unskilled labor and tend to live in large cities where such jobs are readily available and in particular New York, where as of the 2000 census, poverty rates for Pakistanis in relation to the total New York population were higher overall, with 9,417 (28%) of Pakistanis living in poverty, which is greater than the general New York City poverty rate of 21%. Compared with those immigrants that arrived from 1965 who were either professionals or students and considered to be middle- and upper-class backgrounds, the newer migrants tended to be worse off economically.

Compared to other heritage groups in the United States, Pakistani Americans tend to be better educated with 87.4% being at least a high school graduate and 60.9% holding a bachelors degree or higher professional degree. Dr. Mehtab Karim, at the Pew Research Center found that 29.5% of Pakistanis completed four years of college, 22.5% completed a Master’s in a professional degree while 1.6% acquired a doctorate degree, this compared with the American national average of 17.6%, 20% and 1.1% respectively.

Shahid Khan is a Pakistani American billionaire businessman who is owner of an auto-parts company and the NFL team Jacksonville Jaguars. As of 2012, he was estimated to have a net worth exceeding $2.5 billion and is featured on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, on which he ranks 179. Overall on the Forbes list of billionaires, he is the 491st richest person in the world.