If someone asked you who the most “successful” Asians in America are, which ethnic groups would you name?

Chances are, Korean-Americans are somewhere near the top of your list.

Your perception may have been based on statistics of wealth in Asia, where South Korean GDP per capita ($35,277) measures just behind Japan ($37,390) and far ahead of China ($15,424), the Philippines ($7,696), and Vietnam ($6,422).

But the demographics of Asian-Americans are completely different than that of Asians in Asia.

The National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Color (NASCC) recently conducted a survey of wealth among ethnic groups in response to a lack of available economic data on groups broken down by specific national origin, and the results revealed major disparities in wealth accumulation across various racial and ethnic groups in Los Angeles, which serves as a pretty good sample selection since it has the highest concentration of Asians in America. (All statements henceforth reflect only the results of this survey and are limited to the Los Angeles MSA, which includes Orange County).

Let’s start with annual salary, or median family income.

Right off the bat, you might be surprised to find that median Korean-American household annual income is significantly lower than that of Filipino-American households ($60k vs $80k). And despite a much higher percentage of Korean Americans having obtained a Bachelor’s degree compared to Vietnamese Americans (57.1% vs. 36.5%), Korean-American median annual income is only $10k higher. Notice it is also only $6,500 higher than US black families.

A couple other interesting notes before moving on:

First, when you focus on the Los Angeles MSA (again, the best area to study Asian American demographics because it holds the largest AA community) and deaggregate Asian demographics by country of ancestry, you completely deconstruct the “Asians make more money than whites” argument. White Angelenos have a significantly higher median income than all other Asian groups, with the exception of Indians.

Second, you may be tempted to say, “Look how successful African blacks are! There’s no excuse for black Americans to blame racism for how far behind they are!” This doesn’t factor in the fact that many immigrants from Africa are already wealthy before coming to America, and are usually at the top of the social class in Africa before they even get to America. Think about it, who would have an easier time getting a visa or citizenship to the US: some random goat herder in a village, or someone from an elite upper class family who has connections? The report also explains that African blacks who came in recent years did not face the same systemic barriers that historically prevented US blacks from advancing.

And one last thing, notice that 44% of US blacks in the Los Angeles metro area have obtained a bachelor’s degree. Compare this with only 17.7% of African-Americans in the country, and you can see that LA blacks have a much higher rate of education than the rest of the country.

Okay, so the income comparison was interesting, but it wasn’t anything outlandish.

But when you’re measuring status, stability, and power, you’re not analyzing annual salary. How many “Richest People In The World” lists have you seen that were organized by annual income? None. When measuring real money, you’re looking at wealth, defined by net worth across all assets including checking and savings accounts, stocks and mutual funds, retirement accounts, businesses, and equity in home values, all while factoring debt, NOT income.

And when you see the numbers, you might be shocked.

Out of the six largest ethnic Asian groups in the Los Angeles MSA, (in order by population: Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese and Indians), Koreans have the lowest net worth by an enormous margin behind Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Indian families, and it’s lower than that of US black households.

But don’t be too quick to yell, “I knew X/Y/Z culture was superior! Look how wealthy they are!”

From the authors of the study that analyzed these data:

“The report’s findings provide us with a better understanding of what might influence wealth building. A review of the economic literature (Hamilton and Chiteji, 2013) demonstrates that inheritances, bequests, and intra-family transfers account for more of the racial wealth divide than any other demographic and socioeconomic indicators, including education, income, and household structure (see, e.g., Blau and Graham, 1990; Menchik and Jianakoplos, 1997; Conley,

1999; Chietji and Hamilton, 2002; Charles and Hurst, 2003; Gittleman and Wolff, 2007). Thus, it is important to understand the racial differences in resource transfers across generations.”

Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos have a much longer history of having an established presence in the US, which might explain why they have significantly higher median net asset values, due to a more robust support network and potential inter-generational transfers of wealth, compared to Koreans and Vietnamese, who have only established themselves in the US in large numbers relatively recently.

However, Vietnamese are still ahead of Koreans in America in net worth. If you are familiar with the history of Asian immigration to the US, the fact that Korean-American net worth is lower than Vietnamese-American net worth is even more shocking:

“The socioeconomic status of immigrants prior to entering the United States plays an important role in influencing the wealth position of particular groups. The majority of immigrants who came to the United States after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act are highly educated, possess higher levels of wealth than the average American, and high-skilled professionals who are more likely to hold jobs with higher earnings levels. One exception is the Vietnamese, who came to the United States as refugees with limited financial resources.”

Whereas other immigrants who came after the 1965 Immigration Act were still largely screened for education and work skills, waves of Vietnamese immigrants came to America through the passing of the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act in 1975 and the Refugee Act of 1980, and many poor, uneducated and unskilled Vietnamese immigrants came to the US.

Despite this fact, Vietnamese still possess higher total net worth than Koreans.

In other words, there is no excuse for Koreans to be the poorest Asians in America.

Growing up in the 90s, all of my relatives drove modest cars: Fords, Toyotas, Jeeps and the like. But over time, I watched every single family in my extended family upgrade to Lexuses, BMWs and Benzes. Business must be good, I thought, and I was proud of my family for living the American dream.

Then I went to college, majored in economics, took a personal finance class and learned about 401Ks, Roth IRAs, trusts, and a whole world of wealth management that my parents had never taught me.

So one summer back home I decided to be the annoying college kid that wants to show off how much he learned in class, and started asking my relatives what kinds of retirement funds they had.

Nothing. They had nothing.

“I’m not worried…my kids will take care of me,” or “I have faith that the Lord will provide,” they said.

Korean-American immigrants do have one thing in common with Koreans from South Korea: they live in a culture of conspicuous consumption. The tight-knit nature of the Korean immigrant community is a double-edged sword: Korean churches serve as a place to find community and comfort, but are also breeding grounds for a monstrous and crippling “Keeping up with the Kims” mentality, bolstered by the fact that virtually none of these immigrants came from wealth, as they were all raised in extreme poverty during or in the aftermath of the Korean War. Perhaps they are in a competition of who’s living the most fabulous “rags to riches story” not only with other immigrants, but with their family members who stayed behind in South Korea. Perhaps, while watching the South Korean economy experience explosive growth following their departure and seeing their counterparts across the Pacific enjoy an ever-improving quality of life, the big houses, luxury cars and name brand handbags were ways of reassuring themselves that they made the right choice, that leaving their country, their families, and their livelihoods only to struggle in a foreign and completely unfamiliar nation that never accepted them as equals wasn’t all for naught.

First generation Korean and Vietnamese immigrants didn’t have the luxury that others with a longer family history in America have: parents with an understanding of the American financial system who could educate them on the fundamentals of wealth management and influence them to make sound financial decisions.

As second generation, American born Asians with access to unlimited information on the internet and endless educational resources, we don’t have the same excuse.

So don’t fall into the same trap as they did. Real money is smart money, not Benzes and Louis Vuittons.

The charts and quotes from this post were taken from a publication called The Color of Wealth in Los Angeles, A Joint Publication of Duke University, The New School, the University of California, Los Angeles and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, financed by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. It’s an easy read, and is truly revealing regarding not only income and net worth but all aspects of asset management separated by ethnic groups like retirement accounts, annuities, home ownership, credit card and vehicle debt, and other trends. I highly recommend taking a look at it here.