State making gains in education, income

By Timothy Pratt

Thursday, Aug. 14, 2003 | 11:02 a.m.

Alan Chen, spokesman for Chinatown Mall, has seen the Spring Mountain Road commercial center double in size in less than a decade.

Jeremy Aguero, who researches markets for a Las Vegas firm, has gotten more calls from national companies this year on Hispanic consumers in the Las Vegas Valley than he did in the five years before that.

Both men are seeing the same thing in their day-to-day work: The disposable income of Nevada's minorities is among the fastest-growing nationwide in recent years, according to a study released today.

The University of Georgia study, titled "The Multicultural Economy: Minority Buying Power in the New Century 2003," said that Asians in Nevada were tops in the nation in the rate of growth of their disposable income between 1990 and 2003, when compared with Asians in other states. Nevada's blacks ranked second compared with blacks in other states and Hispanics ranked fifth.

In Nevada, the increase in buying power for Asians was 486 percent; blacks, 268 percent; and Hispanics, 515 percent, according to the study.

"This shows that minorities shared in the prosperity of Nevada's growth (during that period) as well as contributed to it," said study author Jeff Humphreys, director of the university's Simon S. Selig Center for Economic Growth.

Nevada's Hispanics also ranked 11th in the total amount of dollars spent after taxes in 2003 -- an estimated $8.5 billion. Hispanics were the only group among the state's principal minorities to enter the nation's Top 20 in this category. Census 2000 showed 393,970 Hispanics in the state, 14th highest in the nation.

The numbers for the valley's Hispanics "are very compelling for corporate America, which will be focusing on ad dollars in your state," Humphreys said.

Aguero, principal analyst for Applied Analysis, has seen this to be true.

He can count on one hand the number of times his phone rang with a national company on the other end asking about the Hispanic market in Nevada during his first five years on the job.

"Twice, maybe three times," he said.

He's topped that number in the last six months, with national grocery store chains, auto dealers and media outlets wanting to know where the Hispanics are locally and how much they spend.

Aguero said the report's numbers were unexpected, but not its general conclusions.

"We've known that minority populations and their buying powers have been increasing for some time (in Nevada)," he said. "They're buying homes, opening bank accounts ... and their presence in the local economy is more and more significant," he said.

Over at the Volcano Tea House in the Chinatown Mall Wednesday, a few dozen customers, mostly from Asian countries, were spending at least $3 a pop of their disposable income on what Chen called the "Starbucks of the Asian community."

Ron Lee, a Chinese-American who recently moved to the valley to retire after 30 years on the job for Pacific Bell in San Francisco, said Nevada's No. 1 ranking in the rate of growth of Asian buying power didn't surprise him, given what he said were certain characteristics of Asian cultures and the valley.

"We're a hard-working, highly educated people ... and the cost of living here is much more affordable,"' he said.

The study cites a 2001 Census Bureau survey showing the number of Asian-owned businesses nationwide increasing at four times the rate of all U.S. firms, and a 2000 survey showing that 44 percent of Asians and Pacific Islanders had bachelor's degrees, compared to 26 percent of the total population.

Jenny Lee, of Korean background and the tea house's manager, said Las Vegas encouraged Asians to spend their money in Asian-owned businesses like those in the mall where her store opened 16 months ago. She shops in the nearby 99 Ranch supermarket for fruits and vegetables used in Korean cooking.

Chen said a lot of the mall's businesses -- like the tea house itself -- are small and family-owned. He said the mall had grown from about 15 businesses when it opened in 1994 to about 35 today.

The report's figures on the one minority group that doesn't include many immigrants -- blacks -- were challenged by the valley's main organization representing black-owned businesses.

"It's good to hear the numbers," said Louis Overstreet, executive director for the Urban Chamber of Commerce.

"But they're a false read in terms of the prosperity of the black community as a whole," he said.

"A lot of black retirees are moving here with six-figure incomes and living in areas like Summerlin. But we still have a major problem on the lower end of the economic scale," he said.

As for the fast-growing immigrant communities, several people interviewed said those communities will eventually convert the disposable income featured in the study into political power.

"Business owners will ... get involved in politics when they see it affects them," said Ron Lee, before ushering a group of visiting relatives with their green bean shaved ices out the door.