Disaggregating A "Model Minority": Assessing Distress Among Asian-Americans


Cesar Ramirez, University of Toronto

Asian-Americans have been promoted as a “model minority” who have overcome the obstacles associated with being a racial minority group in the United States because they have achieved success in a variety of contexts, including attaining incomes and educational outcomes that are comparable to their White counterparts. However, the model minority myth homogenizes Asian-Americans and obscures important variation within the social category. In turn, although the mental health of Asian-Americans has become a popular research topic, Asian-Americans are nevertheless often homogenized in analyses. Moreover, research has tended to focus on diverse, but specific topics, including the adverse effects of race-related discrimination and migration. These research streams have provided mixed evidence, with some research suggesting better mental health outcomes for Asian-Americans and others stating that the “model minority” myth masks mental health issues. However, examinations of general distress among Asian-Americans have been less prevalent and less established. Moreover, research on Asian-American mental health has tended to be cross-sectional. This study seeks to build upon this research and further explore the relationship between the “model minority” myth and mental health by assessing how distress symptoms among a variety of Asian-American ethnic groups diverge from or converge with their White counterparts as well as with each other between adolescence and adulthood. This research utilizes the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine the trajectory of distress symptoms among White and Asian respondents through adolescence, young adulthood, and adulthood. Add Health is a nationally representative study that initially sampled adolescent respondents in grades 7-12 in 1994-1995 and has sustained data collection throughout adolescence, young adulthood, and adulthood. Self-reported psychological distress is measured through a constructed 10-item scale of mental health questions that are included in the Add Health in-home survey data. To assess the extent to which Asian respondents, both as a collective and disaggregated into their subregional and ethnic origin groups, adhere to the “model minority” myth and align with their White counterparts in terms of mental health outcomes, three regression models were constructed. Each model uses the data’s White respondents as its reference category. The first model broadly compares the difference in predicted distress scores between White and Asian respondents. The second model distinguishes Asian respondents by subregion (i.e., East Asian and Southeast Asian). The third and final model, meanwhile separates all Asian respondents by the ethnicity with which they self-identify (i.e., Chinese; Filipino; Japanese; Korean; Vietnamese). Growth curve models conditioned on income and education will be utilized to explore variation in the trajectories of distress symptoms at the aggregate, regional, and country levels of Asian respondents. This variation will also be compared to the trajectories of distress symptoms of White respondents over the three survey waves. Initial regression analyses suggest that Asian-Americans report distinct levels of distress symptoms from their White counterparts and that these differences vary amongst the different ethnic groups that comprise the Asian-American category. Statistically significant differences exist at each of the selected survey waves. Further, these relationships do not appear to be static. Convergence does occur over time and the predicted mean distress scores for the different ethno-racial groups tend to follow the same pattern of peaking during adolescence (Wave 1), declining in early adulthood (Wave 3), and then rising slightly during adulthood (Wave 4). However, statistically significant differences between White and Asian respondents exist at each wave of the survey. My regression models disaggregating the Asian-American category by subregion and ethnic group demonstrate variation in how different subregional and ethnic origin groups diverge from or converge with the predicted distress scores of White respondents. This subsequently suggests that, over the life course, levels of distress vary in important ways both between White and Asian respondents and amongst the Asian respondents. Existing research on the mental health of Asian Americans has demonstrated mixed results, but these initial findings suggest that Asian-Americans report distinct levels of distress symptoms from their White counterparts and that important variation exists within this social group. Forthcoming analyses will illuminate more clearly the exact nature of these differences. Nevertheless, initial findings lean towards previous research that indicates that mental health issues among Asian-Americans may be overlooked due to assumptions associated with the “model minority myth”.

This paper will be presented at the following session: