How is income distributed among Indian Americans, from the top to the bottom?

The shape of the distribution

Medians summarize a whole population in one number. To see the spread, the best public source is the Census Bureau's household income brackets for Asian Indian households, published in its 2017–2021 five-year detailed tables, the most recent release with this level of detail for the group¹.

Household income	Asian Indian alone	Asian alone	White, not Hispanic	All US households
Under $25,000	7.2%	13.3%	14.8%	17.2%
$25,000–$49,999	7.6%	13.0%	18.3%	19.6%
$50,000–$99,999	20.5%	24.4%	30.0%	29.6%
$100,000–$149,999	20.3%	18.3%	17.5%	16.3%
$150,000–$199,999	14.3%	11.6%	8.6%	7.8%
$200,000 or more	30.1%	19.4%	10.7%	9.5%

The single largest bracket for Asian Indian households is the top one. Nearly a third of households report $200,000 or more a year, more than three times the national share. Nearly two-thirds (64.7%) earn at least $100,000¹. Since these figures were collected, the Asian Indian median has risen further, to $165,721 in 2024², so today's top-bracket share is likely higher; see Indian American median household income.

What HeyAlbert data shows

The top of the distribution

Census brackets stop at $200,000, so they cannot show how many households earn far more. Pew Research Center's analysis of 2022 ACS data, adjusted for household size, found that Indian Americans had the highest incomes of any Asian origin group at the 90th percentile; Chinese American households were second, at $200,000³. Mean earnings also hint at a long upper tail: among Asian Indian households with earnings, the mean was $212,461 in 2024, well above the $165,721 median household income². The two measures are not strictly comparable (one counts only earnings, the other all income), but a mean this far above a median usually signals a relatively small number of very high earners pulling the average up.

For the very top, the people with eight- and nine-figure fortunes, survey data runs out and lists such as Forbes take over. We cover that in how many Indian American millionaires and billionaires there are and who the richest Indian Americans are.

The bottom of the distribution

A minority of Indian American households have modest or low incomes. In 2017–2021, 7.2% of Asian Indian households earned under $25,000 and 14.8% earned under $50,000¹. In 2024, 6.7% of Asian Indians lived below the poverty line, including 4.6% of children and 7.7% of people aged 65 and older². National rates were 12.1%, 15.5% and 11.2%⁴.

Who is at the bottom? Pew found that, across the largest Asian origin groups, people in the lowest-earning households are more likely to be recent immigrants. Among Indian American immigrants, 71% of those in the highest-earning households had lived in the US for more than 10 years, compared with 53% in the lowest-earning households³. Students, retirees who joined adult children, and workers in lower-paid jobs are all part of the picture. The age and arrival profile is explored in foreign-born versus US-born Indian Americans.

Is inequality rising?

Yes, within most large Asian American groups. Pew measured income inequality with the 90/10 ratio, the income of a household at the 90th percentile divided by one at the 10th. It found that inequality rose among Indian, Korean, Japanese and Filipino American households between 1980 and 2022, with the biggest rise among Chinese Americans³. Indian Americans were the highest-earning Asian group at both the 10th and 90th percentiles in 2022³, so the community's whole distribution sits higher than other groups', but the distance between its top and bottom has grown.

Wealth is spread even more unevenly than income. Among all Asian American households in the Federal Reserve's 2022 survey, the 90th percentile of net worth was more than $3 million, about 230 times the 10th percentile⁵; see Indian American household net worth.

What drives the spread

The top of the distribution reflects two-earner professional households in high-wage metros, often in technology, medicine and finance. In 2024, 92.9% of Asian Indian households had earnings from work and 69.7% were married-couple households². Geography matters too: the Asian Indian median household income ranged from $230,380 in Washington and $212,558 in California to $124,215 in New York in 2024, reflecting differences in local industries, household composition and living costs⁶. The lower end includes newer arrivals, older relatives and people in service and retail work. For the drivers at the top, see why Indian Americans are wealthier than average; for how the picture compares across groups, see Indian American wealth compared with other groups.