A new report out says the pandemic could increase the poverty rate in the Indian American community from 6 percent to 10 percent.
The American Bazaar reports the warning comes from Indiaspora, a non-profit from the Johns Hopkins’ Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
Currently 4.2 million Indian Americans live below the poverty line.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to increase poverty among Indian Americans by between a quarter and half, depending on the duration and intensity of the health and economic shocks”, said Devesh Kapur to the Quint.
The report says the most vulnerable are those Indian Americans working in industries hardest hit by COVID-19. Those industries include mining, general stores, air and rail transportation, gasoline stations, and childcare services.
The highest concentration of poor Indian Americans are in New York’s Queen’s County, followed by Cook County in Illinois, and Los Angeles County in California. However, much of the poverty is dispersed with only the top 15 most populous counties with Indian Americans making up only a third of the poverty.
The study entitled A Study of Poverty in the Indian American Population was authored by Kapur and Jashan Bajwaat.
The authors told News 18 most of the poverty in the community is concentrated among Bengali and Punjabi speaking Indian Americans. One-fifth of them are not American citizens and about one-third are currently not working.
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