Associated Press through Jerusalem Post relates that the US Census Bureau has just published its first report compiling information regarding Arab Americans. It turns out they are better educated and have higher incomes than the average American. A majority of Arab Americans are from Lebanon, while the second largest group is from Egypt and the third largest is Syrian. That would make me guess that most Arab Americans are of Christian origins, not Muslim. The report also points out that the largest populations of Arab Americans are concentrated in California, New York and Michigan.

There are about 1.2 million US residents whose ancestry is solely or partly Arab, less than a half-percent of all Americans. The socio-economic data in the report covered just the 850,000 people who identified themselves in the 2000 census as having only Arab ancestries.

Arabs are nearly twice as likely as the typical US resident to possess a college degree – 24-41 percent. Better education typically translates into higher income, and that was highlighted in the report: The median income for an Arab family was $52,300, about $2,300 more than the median income for all US families.

The proportion of US Arabs working in management jobs was higher than the US average, 34-42%.

You can read the actual report.

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themiddle

3 Comments

  • You’d think that Christian arabs overseas would not be too fond of the muslim Arabs who persecuted them and, HELLO!, was one of the main reasons why they left their homelands, but it’s not the case too often.

    What’s with the 1.2million number? I understand that there are more Arabs living in Michigan that 1.2mil.

  • Correct, ck. There are certain areas of the country where the number of Muslims might be as high as 2-3% of the population, which becomes a very important segment of the population if you’re a politician courting votes.