One Minnesota, 17 cultures: the many 'gaps' of a changing state

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Minnesota's persistent racial economic gaps are a justifiable cause of distress. A few months back, I wrote in this space about some welcome "good news on Minnesota racial gaps," as newly released American Community Survey (Census) data revealed some narrowing of the difference between Black and white household incomes.

I probed and speculated a bit about trends that might be contributing to the encouraging convergence — particularly a higher rate of employment and lower rate of single parenthood among Black Minnesotans in recent years.

Now comes the State Demographic Center's "Economic Status of Minnesotans 2023" report. Released last month, the five-year update confirmed "stark economic inequalities among Minnesota's cultural groups," as noted in a Star Tribune news report.

Fact is, this remarkable piece of government research, called a "chartbook," documents striking differences in the circumstances and ways of life of no less than 17 distinct cultural groups calling Minnesota home.

To understand economic inequalities, it is key to consider family support systems, employment levels, age, health and other factors that influence economic outcomes — along with, as the report takes pains to observe, the effects of discrimination and the legacies of past injustices.

By dividing Minnesotans into 17 separate cultural groups, the chartbook allows us to at least partly control for discrimination. It makes it possible to compare minority populations, not merely with the majority white population, but with one another, not just in terms of economic well-being, but also demographics, cultural patterns and lifestyle norms.

The chartbook teases apart census data collected between 2016 and 2020 for three different American Indian populations — Dakota, Ojibwe and all other tribal backgrounds — and three Hispanic groups — Mexican, Puerto Rican and all others. Asian Minnesotans are separated into eight distinct ethnic populations. And Black Minnesotans are tracked in five groups, the largest of which, "African Americans," consists of U.S.-born Black Minnesotans who don't identify with any recent immigrant population.

Many differences exist among these populations of color, and between them and Minnesota's white majority, that potentially influence economic well-being.

Begin with age. In general, incomes rise with age as people advance in their careers. The chartbook shows that the median age of every minority population in Minnesota (except Pacific Islanders) is younger than the white median of 42.

Yet the age profiles of minority groups differ dramatically, ranging from a median age of 19 for Somali-Minnesotans, by far the youngest group, to double that, 38, among Minnesotans of Filipino and Vietnamese descent, and in the "Other Black" population, which consists of some 44,000 Black immigrants who hail from some nation other than Somalia, Ethiopia or Liberia.

African American and Mexican Minnesotans — with median ages of 27 and 24, respectively — fall in the middle among minority groups, both far younger than the state's population overall.

Another area of sharp disparities is household size, which has mixed effects. More workers in a household can boost earnings, but more mouths to feed drive expenses upward.

On this score, Minnesota's African American population stands out, with fully 41% of households consisting of a single person living alone. Only Korean Minnesotans (43%) compare, while just 13% of Hmong households and 17% of Mexican households consist of a single person. Statewide, 29% of all households are one-person.

"Minnesotans participating in the labor force are the engine of our economy," declares the chartbook. Obviously, employment is also central to personal prosperity. The Star Tribune news story last month noted sharp differences in "who's sitting out of the labor force."

Economists define the "labor force" as all persons who either have a job or are looking for one. According to the chartbook just 18% of Minnesotans of "prime working age" (16-64) are "sitting out of the labor force" by that definition.

But the percentage outside the labor force varies sharply, from just 12 % among Liberian Minnesotans and 15% among "Other Black" Minnesotans to more than 35% among all American Indian groups, 25% among Somali Minnesotans and 29% in the African American population. (The figure is 17% among white residents.)

As for the "unemployed" — those looking for a job who haven't yet found one — the chartbook reports that the African American, Somali and American Indian groups suffered unemployment during the study period at rates far higher than any other groups — more than double the rates, for example, experienced by Minnesotans with Ethiopian, Liberian or Other Black backgrounds.

Disabilities are an important obstacle to employment in which disparities are sizable. The chartbook shows that among young adults (ages 18-44) American Indian and African American Minnesotans report disability rates far higher than other groups — twice as high or more than the rates among white and Mexican Minnesotans or any group of Asian Minnesotans.

All this said, on one key component of economic life — the median annual earnings of a full-time, year-round worker — disparities are not especially large in the chartbook data, at least not among most minority groups.

Setting aside the best paid cultural groups of all — Minnesotans of Asian Indian and Chinese backgrounds — median earnings of fully employed white Minnesotans ($56,700) are 27% higher than those of the next best paid minority group, the Other Black immigrant population ($44,800). But the median full-time earnings of every other group of color are within 16% of that figure, with the lone exception of Somali Minnesotans (whose earnings trail the Other Black level by 28%).

What the do all these numbers add up to? Group differences in age, household size (which shapes the number of potential earners per household) and employment rates are most assuredly not the whole explanation for income disparities. But given the modest differences in full-time year-round earnings, they could be having a significant effect.

At all events, the chartbook's data on median household incomes contains a few surprises.

White Minnesota median household income ($75,900) ranks fourth among the state's cultural groups, behind Asian Indian ($120,600), Chinese ($84,400) and Vietnamese ($83,000) households, and just above Hmong households ($74,000).

Puerto Rican household income ($64,000) is 16% below the white level; Mexican household income ($55,100) is 27% below.

Black cultural groups' incomes are lower — but they differ from one another substantially. The Other Black immigrant group's median household income ($50,700) is 78% higher than the level of Somali Minnesotan households ($28,500) and almost one-third higher than that of African American households ($38,600).

The chartbook data suggests that the Ojibwe, African American and Somali communities are the only groups in the state in which the median household income is lower than the median earnings of a single full-time, year round worker.

"Differential access to opportunity and structural racism — back through generations and up to the present — have contributed to these and other widely disparate economic outcomes by race," the Demographic Center's chartbook declares. But it adds that "broad racial groupings can obscure, rather than illuminate, the situation at hand."

The chartbook's more refined analysis illuminates much about Minnesota's disparities, which, far from having a single cause or solution, are as complex as their racial, ethnic, cultural and historical roots.

Cultural groups of the same race or ethnicity, presumably faced with somewhat similar challenges overcoming social bias, achieve quite different economic outcomes in Minnesota. Other differences, in family structure, work patterns and more, seem to have something to do with it.