Although decades have passed since the initial immigration of Southeast Asians to the U.S. after the Vietnam War, the socioeconomic outcomes of the native-born offspring of Southeast Asian immigrants have not been adequately considered in recent research. We therefore investigate current data on the education, wages, poverty, affluence, and household income of Southeast Asian Americans. The results indicate that the socioeconomic outcomes of native-born Southeast Asian Americans are substantially higher than their immigrant generation. Second-generation Thai and Vietnamese tend to have higher socioeconomic outcomes than whites, while second-generation Cambodians, Hmong and Laotians have lower outcomes than whites. However, none of the five native-born Southeast Asian groups are penalized in terms of wages net of their demographic characteristics. Furthermore, all five of the native-born Southeast Asian groups generally have higher socioeconomic outcomes than African Americans and Hispanics. Whereas prior discussions of Southeast Asian Americans imply that their lower socioeconomic characteristics derive from the intergenerational persistence of minority discrimination in an inherently racialized society, we instead view them as being broadly consistent with assimilation theory which has traditionally been based on a three-generational model.

尽管自从越南战争后东南亚人最初向美国移民以来已经过去了数十年，但最近的研究并未充分考虑东南亚移民的本地出生后代的社会经济后果。因此，我们调查了有关东南亚美国人的教育，工资，贫困，富裕和家庭收入的最新数据。结果表明，本地出生的东南亚裔美国人的社会经济结果大大高于其移民一代。第二代泰国人和越南人的社会经济成果往往比白人高，而第二代柬埔寨人，苗族和老挝人的社会经济成果却低于白人。但是，在五个本地出生的东南亚人群中，没有一个因其人口特征而受到工资方面的惩罚。此外，所有五个土著人出生的东南亚群体总体上具有比非裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人更高的社会经济成果。先前对东南亚裔美国人的讨论表明，其较低的社会经济特征源于固有种族主义社会中少数族裔歧视的代代相传，而我们却认为它们与传统上基于三代模型的同化理论基本一致。