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Indian's in U.S. earn more than natives
By agencies
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Wednesday, 06 July 2005, 19:30 IST
NEW DELHI: Average per capita income of Indians in the U.S. is $60,093 as per the U.S. census of 2000. The more remarkable fact about this figure is that it stands against the US average of $38,885 in the same census.
This is revealed in a World Bank study on India and its knowledge industry released last week. The study also captures the trends of Indian Diaspora in the United States and elsewhere.
The World Bank report quoting the U.S. census of 2000 says that Indian Americans also have an edge over their American counterparts in the field of education. With more than 62 percent of them having some college education (compared with just more than 20 percent for the U.S. population).
While they have spread their wings in virtually all professions including agriculture, biotechnology, business, economics, finance, journalism, management, medicine their presence is highly prominent in the IT industry of the USA: approximately 300,000 Indian-Americans work in Silicon Valley, account for more than 15 percent of start-ups in the U.S., and have an average annual income of about $200,000.
The Indian Diaspora in the U.S. is not only growing wealthy but also rapidly. The Indian American community now boasts of 1.68 million people compared with 0.81 million in 1990-a growth of 106%.
Though India, being the source country, cannot stop cribbing about its loss of highly trained personnel and its fiscal costs (as many receive publicly financed education), the remittances it receives coupled with return of migrants with greater international experience bring a mollifying touch to the Indian scenario.
In India, between 1990 and 2000, remittances from abroad grew six fold from $2.1 billion to $12.3 billion. The destination of these remittances shifted significantly from Kerala and Gujarat to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
India is also able to tap capital knowledge and markets via its Diaspora, especially after its economic reforms in 1991.
The software industry and IT- enabled services, investments of Diaspora members is quite limited (about 3 percent of FDI), but their contribution is mostly in the form knowledge linkages, that is, with foreign markets, helping Indian firms to absorb technical and managerial knowledge.
As the world becomes more and more aware of the high quality pool of intellect in India and as India becomes less and less opaque to the world, big MNCs like Microsoft, IBM, GE are being incessantly drawn towards this 58 year old independent nation accelerating its path of economic growth.