By TERRY TANG and LINLEY SANDERS, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Anxiety about costs and affordability is particularly high among Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, even at a moment when economic stress is widespread, according to a new poll.
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About half of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults said they wanted the government to prioritize addressing the high cost of living and inflation, according to the survey from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted in early December. In comparison, a December AP-NORC poll found that about one-third of U.S. adults overall rated inflation and financial worries as the most pressing problems.
The findings indicate that this small but fast-growing group is not persuaded by President Donald Trump’s attempts to tamp down worries about inflation and defend his tariffs. Even when considering partisanship, AAPI Democrats and Independents — and even AAPI Republicans — are at least slightly more likely than those groups overall to mention inflation and costs. Concern about costs has risen among AAPI adults since last year, when about 4 in 10 AAPI adults said they wanted the government to focus on this issue.
Like Americans overall, AAPI adults have also become more focused on health care issues over the past year.
The poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, whose views are usually not highlighted in other surveys because of small sample sizes and lack of linguistic representation.
Jayakumar Natarajan, a 56-year-old manager for a major tech company living in the San Francisco Bay Area, is rethinking his goal of retiring at 60 because of climbing costs in basic goods and health care. He can afford to live the way he wants for now, but is considering delaying retirement or moving outside the U.S., where prices are lower.
The cost of health care is very much on his mind. “I think it will really make a big difference in the way I think about retirement planning,” he said.
AAPI adults are worried about rising costs
Inflation and affordability loom large for AAPI adults, even compared to other economic concerns, the survey found. About 2 in 10 AAPI adults mentioned housing costs or jobs and unemployment as priorities for the government to work on in the coming year, which was generally in line with Americans overall.
Balancing financial obligations has become especially challenging for people living in high-cost areas, where a steady salary may not cover a growing family. Kevin Tu, 32, and his wife recently reached two milestones — buying a new home outside of Seattle in Lynnwood, Washington, and expecting their first child. The couple works full time and Tu also has a math tutoring business, but he is still nervous about what will happen after the baby arrives.
“I’m trying to figure out how to balance possible part-time day care with our mortgage, with cost of living,” said Tu, who is Taiwanese American.
Black, Hispanic and AAPI adults were more apt than white adults to bring up unemployment, jobs and housing costs as priorities, the surveys found.
Part of what may explain AAPI adults’ increasing worry about everyday costs is the largest AAPI adult populations reside in states and major metropolitan cities with higher costs of living and higher rent, such as California and New York.
While tariffs have impacted American consumers across the board, they have a particularly strong effect on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who prefer certain imported goods such as food and clothing. Karthick Ramakrishnan, AAPI Data executive director and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, recalls how last year, some AAPI shoppers were going to ethnic grocery stores and “stockpiling” ahead of tariffs kicking in.
“When it comes to costs for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, it’s just not cost of general market groceries but ethnic market groceries,” Ramakrishnan said. “It’s something visible to them and potentially causing anxiety and worry.”
Health care is also a priority for AAPI adults
Some 44% of AAPI adult also want the government to prioritize health care in the coming year. That’s not meaningfully different from among U.S. adults overall, emphasizing Americans’ renewed focus on the issue after a year of health care cuts.
Srilasya Volam, a 25-year-old business consultant in Atlanta said that some of her family members have embarked on “ medical tourism ” trips as a result of high U.S. health care costs, a practice of traveling to other countries for more cost-effective medical procedures.
“It’s cheaper for us to get a flight ticket and go to India and have a medical procedure and come back than it is to have that done here,” she said. “When I was younger, we would just go to India and we’d be like, now that we’re here, let’s do everything: the dental checkups, every checkup. It’s a lot more cost effective.”
The poll found that about 6 in 10 AAPI adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about their health care costs increasing in 2026, which is roughly in line with U.S. adults overall.
Falling confidence in the government’s ability to make progress
The survey found that AAPI adults are less confident in the government’s ability to make progress on the important issues facing the country than they were just after the 2024 election.
About 7 in 10 AAPI adults say they are “not at all” or just “slightly confident” that the government will make progress on key issues, up from 60% at the end of 2024.
Dissatisfaction with the Trump administration may be a factor. And while the economy is top of mind, other factors could be feeding the fear that the government won’t change things for the better this year.
Ernie Roaza, a 66-year-old retired geologist in Tallahassee, Florida, is a first generation immigrant to the U.S. from South Korea, where he grew up under a dictatorship. He worries that Trump is doing “everything that dictators do,” adding, “I’ve seen it before. It’s almost laughable, but it’s scary at the same time.”
He remains optimistic that the country will get through it.
“This administration will make things worse,” Roaza said. “But in every administration we’ve had, there are hills and valleys. We’re in the valleys right now.”
The poll of 1,029 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders was conducted from Dec. 2-8, 2025, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.
Tang reported from Phoenix.
