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Comment by colmvp | Hacker News Reader

1) What is the percentage of students who get admitted into U.S. schools from foreign countries poor? Are most actually middle/upper class and just prefer to study overseas? I saw the latter as a pretty common scenario in Australia and Canada.

2) If they are poor, why are Chinese/Indians more likely to get into engineering/compsci than other demographics that are more local, such as poor African Americans / Hispanic Americans? I've worked in tech in the U.S. for the last five years and have met very few male African Americans / Hispanic Americans despite working in cities with high populations of those demographics.

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If they are poor, why are Chinese/Indians more likely to get into engineering/compsci than other demographics that are more local, such as poor African Americans / Hispanic Americans?

Both the Indians and Chinese are almost certainly poor. At least 95% of India is poorer than the bottom 5% of America, and about 80-85% of China is.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...

Granted, they might be rich by Indian/Chinese standards, but that's a far cry from actually being lower middle class in the US.

I'm not sure it is more likely for Chinese/Indians to enter STEM fields than your various aforementioned demographic groups. The ones who do enter STEM fields are more likely to immigrate to the US, however...

Most of the Indians and Chinese that I went to school with were the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers, and professors.

What makes you believe that Indian/Chinese doctors, lawyers and professors are not poor by US standards?

You might be a "rich" corporate lawyer living in Bandra, but that doesn't mean you can afford a car, or more than 1 room/person for your family (most poor Americans have these things).

Well, what about having several house servants? Rich Americans don't have these things.

Despite having 'help', it seems that the Indians tend to migrate towards the US, rather than people from the US migrating towards India. See my other comment.

Most Indians in US are from top 1% in India - pretty much every Indian I know had maids/gardeners/cooks at home. One guy cooked/washed clothes himself for the first time when he came to US.

> pretty much every Indian I know had maids/gardeners/cooks at home.

In poorer countries - especially those with fairly unequal societies, hiring help is cheaper - not just absolutely, but proportionally, as well, so it's much more common. I read some economics discussions of this years ago, but don't really recall the details.

In other words, an Indian is a lot more likely to have hired help than a Norwegian, even if the Norwegian is better off.

Inequality is irrelevant. India has a Gini index of 33, compared to the 45 for the US.

Incentives are a much more plausible explanation. The US pays people not to work. India doesn't.

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