Just as both a corollary and a follow-up to my last post about why you should own your own business, I was looking through some demographic research last week, and came across the data sets pertaining to Asian-Americans.

According the U.S. Census Bureau, the category of Asian-American includes, but is not restricted to, these main countries of family orgin:

U.S. Asian Groups                      % of Asian-American population

Chinese        4,010,114               23.2

Filipino          3,416,840               19.7

Indian           3,183,063               18.4

Vietnamese   1,737,433               10.0

Korean         1,706,822               9.9

Japanese      1,304,286               7.5

There are 17 million Asian-Americans, or 5.6% of the U.S. population.

Asian-Americans have surpassed other Americans as a group in terms of average household income in the U.S. And they’ve done it handily, too. The average household income in the U.S. is right under $50,000 (as of the 2010 census data) and the average Asian-American household income is (as of the 2010 census data) $66,000.

Some of this is due to their higher educational levels, and some of this is due to, wait for it – their higher level of business ownership, whether that’s ownership of an LLC or a corporation, or, simply working for themselves as a sole proprietor. In the last decade, Asian-owned businesses have increased at a rate of over 40%. Bear in mind, this is a 40% increase over what was already a very high business ownership rate. As an example, the business census data in 2000 showed a 25% rate of business ownership for Korean-Americans. The average rate of small business ownership in the U.S. is 8.6%.

Asians as a group are very open to the premise of owning their own business, and for many of these small business owners, this has translated into greater upward economic movement.