Giving Compass' Take:

• While Asians overall rank as the highest earning racial and ethnic group in the U.S., it is not a status shared by all Asians, according to Pew Research.

• From 1970 to 2016, the gains in income for lower-income Asians trailed behind the gains for their counterparts in other groups.

• Read more about economic and pay wage inequality

Income inequality, a measure of the economic gap between the rich and poor, has risen steadily in the United States since the 1970s. More recently, the issue burst into public consciousness with the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 and subsequent calls for a $15 minimum wage. An important part of the story of rising income inequality is that experiences within America’s racial and ethnic communities vary strikingly from one group to the other.

An increase in income inequality matters because of the potential for social and economic consequences. People at the lower rungs of the income ladder may experience diminished economic opportunity and mobility and have less political influence. Researchers have also linked growing inequality to greater geographic segregation by income. In addition, there is evidence that rising inequality may harm overall economic growth by reducing consumption levels, causing excessive borrowing by lower- to middle-income families, or limiting investment in education.

In this process, Asians displaced blacks as the most economically divided racial or ethnic group in the U.S., according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. While Asians overall rank as the highest earning racial and ethnic group in the U.S., it is not a status shared by all Asians: From 1970 to 2016, the gains in income for lower-income Asians trailed well behind the gains for their counterparts in other groups.

Read the full article on income quality by Rakesh Kochhar and Antohny Cilluffo at Pew Research Center.