As many have stated the interpretation of the figures is not easy and there are a host of variables which may not even have been considered.

Still accepting them as given they present a depressing picture.

I think the report itself is as accurate as you are going to get (with the proviso it is from 2001, 6 years ago), though I am not particularly impressed with their use of raw, un-age-adjusted figures to generate bigger headline numbers.

And what happened to the Chinese? They are talked about a lot in the report, but are not mentioned in the summaries, graphs or statistical soundbites.

“One of the reasons for that high level of poverty is the low level of economic activity of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women who choose to stay at home rather than work.

46% of Pakistani women and 57% of Bangladeshi women are homemakers vs only 11% of white British women [1]. That deprives them of a great deal of income.

The little income there is also has to be shared among more people because Pakistanis (4.0) and Bangladeshis (4.7) have about twice as many children, on average, as white British women (1.8) and Indian women (2.3) [2]. So even if the incomes were the same the children of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis would be worse off economically than those of whites and Indians.

You mention that even when there is ‘at least’ one breadwinner in the family poverty is higher than among whites but that is not a fair comparison as white households are much more likely to have more than one breadwinner.

If you look at the numbers for Net equivalised disposable household income by employment status you’ll see that couples which only have one person in full time employment are 6 times as likely to be in the bottom quintle of Net equivalised disposable household income when compared to households with both adults in full time employment [3].

Women are not the only ones with low levels of economic activity although their numbers are high.

There is also a high level of economic inactivity among Pakistani and Bangladeshi men due to long term illness or disability. 14.6% of Pakistani men were economically inactive because of illness or disability. It was even higher among Bangladeshis with 16.6%. For white males it was only 6.5% [4]. Why is there such a big difference there? Are they scamming the system or are they really that much more likely to have illnesses or disabilities?

The unemployment rates are also very high among Pakistani and Bangladeshis men. In fact it was even higher in the 1990s than it was in the 1970s when it could be argued that there was a greater level of discrimination against ethnic minorities.

In the period of 1973-1982 the unemployment level of Pakistani/Bangladeshi men was 9.5% compared to 11.1% for Indians and 5.5$ for whites.

In the period of 1993-2001 the unemployment level of Pakistani/Bangladeshi men had risen to 23.7% while the rate for Indians had gone down to 9.8% and whites were at 8.0% [5].

I’m not sure why the situation is getting worse instead of better when it comes to unemployment among Pakistani/Bangladeshi men.

I’m not sure what the British Government can do to correct the poverty problems among Pakistanis and Bangladeshis unless they can convince the women to go to work and have fewer children and get the men to go to school and earn some qualifications.

[1] http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2005-2006/rrep341.pdf (page 92 of 124)

[2]
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_population/PT104_v3.pdf
(pages 14 and 15 of 78)

[3] http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/hbai/hbai2006/pdf_files/chapters/chapter_3_hbai07.pdf
(page 6 of 15)

[4] http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2005-2006/rrep341.pdf (page 92 of 124)

[5]
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2005-2006/rrep341.pdf (page 36 of 124)”

Not at all. For a start I am limited in my own experience, as everyone is.

Lets put it this way – most posters on here may not have enough knowledge about how the other half lives or survives.

I think I see what you’re getting at and wouldn’t like comment about others but I reckon I’ve a fair bit of knowledge and experience of it…

“Lets put it this way – most posters on here may not have enough knowledge about how the other half lives or survives.”

That may or may not be true Refresh, but what would be the purpose of such a survey? Should we not comment on such issues unless we have direct experience of them?

(Off topic, with apologies, Pakistan has called for the banning of Hizb ul-Tahir in the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/30/wpak30.xml )

That is something I have been long concerned about – and Sonia in 13 points to it too.

Lets put it this way – most posters on here may not have enough knowledge about how the other half lives or survives.

yeah Bapey’s got a good point up there.

dunno – it’s all confusing. me i can’t really speak about this – i know very little about asians in council estates : most of the asians i’ve met here in the UK went to univ are all very well paid professionals now ( much more so than me i might add – muggins working in a charity) so i can’t comment. having been brown didn’t seem to make much of a difference for that lot, what with degrees from LSE and the like. what kind of jobs are we talking about anyway? given the hoo-ha nowadays about diversity, everyone i know seems to be better off being ‘brown’.

so what are the 80% of bangladeshis doing then? presumably not rioting. staying at home? working in restaurants but saying they’re not working?

You know I think it might be worth putting up a poll on here to see what is the ethnic and social breakdown of contributors. Specifically I would be interested to hear about educational background – public, private, comprehensive, none. And perhaps get a rough idea of how people have fared based on their education and aspirations.

I’m not sure I see the value tbh, wouldn’t PP be heavily skewered in terms of its results?

Those in working households …………

Gonna skew the figures. Single income families for example high in asian community on the whole.