Thursday, May 27, 2004
the brown tide

I'm intensely curious about the Indian population in the UK. I don't know why. Every now and then you see one on a British television programme. Sometimes they even have speaking parts! I got curious as just how many there were. Turns out the UK only has about 2.4 million South Asians, and about 1.1 million Indians (source). For comparison, I looked up the United States' numbers. In absolute terms, the UK's behind the United States, where the Indian-American population stood at about 1.6 million in 2000 1 In relative terms, of course, that's a big difference 2 , since the US has five times the UK's population 3 . Most Indians live in California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Illinois (source), with Texas having edged out Illinois during the 1990s. Indian were the fastest growing Asian 4 population in the US, and third-largest in absolute terms at 1.6 million, after Chinese (2.4 million) and Filipinos (1.85 million). I didn't realize there were that many Filipinos here. The Japanese population in the US actually declined over the same period (source).

1 I couldn't readily find numbers on non-Indian South Asians in the US, but they are clearly far fewer; a large part of the immigration to the United States from India has been technology-driven (viz. my entire extended family), and Pakistan and Bangladesh just don't have the educational infrastructure that India does.
2 Specifically, 1.8% vs. 0.55%
3 Not to mention that Indians have only been emigrating to the US in large numbers since the 1960s (I challenge you to find an American-born Indian over the age of 40), while, of course, Indians' relationship with UK goes back a lot further.
4 Yes, India is part of Asia, for people who seem to think Asian means "East Asian," i.e., Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipinos, and Vietnamese. Apparently, they understand this in the UK, although I've nearly given up on people over here understanding this. I have been told multiple times that I am not "Asian."

¶ 757 Posted at 01.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( india | statistics )

Friday, June 04, 2004
gdppp

According to the Economist, the United States has (by far) the highest GDP per person in the world when measured by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). What that means is that the researchers normalized each country's currency according to the price of a basket of goods in each, rather than relying on currency exchange rates, and thus gives a more realistic assessment of value. "My share" of the US GDP enables me to purchase about 30% more than a Japanese person, 350% more than a Mexican, and 1300% more than an Indian. The US is clearly the richest nation in the world, even with the economic downturn.

¶ 766 Posted at 01.05 PM ⇒ No Comments ( statistics )

Thursday, January 03, 2008
a dip in the distribution

While looking up something else, I found a handy chart1 showing the age distribution of people in the United States (broken up by 5-year groups, using 2000 Census data). It looks like people about my age (± 2 years) are in the lowest population cohort except among the elderly 2. I wonder what the consequences of that are. One thing appears to be that it was a lot easier to get into competitive universities because there was less competition. Perhaps the same will be true of jobs seeking a particular experience level. I imagine being in a statistical minimum like that would have primarily beneficial effects like those I mentioned, but I don't really know.

1 On an equally handy-looking site
2 The small size of the 0-4 group appears to be a statistical artifact, going by the annual number of births

¶ 1631 Posted at 06.52 PM ⇒ No Comments ( fyi | statistics )