Anxiety about costs and affordability is particularly high among Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, according to a new poll from AAPI Data and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Conducted in early December, the survey found that about half of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults said they wanted the government to prioritize addressing high cost of living and inflation.
The findings come as economic stress is widespread. 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 survey also suggests the group is not persuaded by President Donald Trump’s efforts to tamp down worries about inflation and defend his tariffs. When respondents were broken down by party, AAPI Democrats and Independents were at least slightly more likely than their groups overall to mention inflation and costs, and AAPI Republicans were also at least slightly more likely than their groups overall to do so.
Concern about costs has also increased within the AAPI community. The report said that about 4 in 10 AAPI adults last year wanted the government to focus on costs, and that share has risen since then. The poll is part of an ongoing effort to examine the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, a group that is sometimes underrepresented in other surveys because of small sample sizes and limited linguistic coverage.
On day-to-day affordability, the poll found that 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, generally in line with Americans overall. The story included examples of how rising costs are affecting household decisions for people in high-cost areas. Kevin Tu, a Taiwanese American living in the Washington area, and his wife recently bought a home outside of Seattle in Lynnwood and are expecting their first child; Tu said, “I’m trying to figure out how to balance possible part-time day care with our mortgage, with cost of living.”
The AP report also said that the worries may be amplified by where many AAPI adults live, including states and major metropolitan cities with higher costs of living and higher rent, such as California and New York. It added that tariffs can affect consumers broadly but may have a stronger impact for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who often purchase certain imported goods like food and clothing.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, the executive director of AAPI Data and a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, recalled that some shoppers last year were “stockpiling” ahead of tariffs. He said, “When it comes to costs for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, it’s just not cost of general market groceries but ethnic market groceries,” adding that “It’s something visible to them and potentially causing anxiety and worry.”
Health care is also a prominent concern in the survey. Some 44% of AAPI adults said they want the government to prioritize health care in the coming year, a level the report said was not meaningfully different from among U.S. adults overall. The poll found that about 6 in 10 AAPI adults are extremely or very concerned that their health care costs will increase in 2026.
The report included an example from Srilasya Volam, a business consultant in Atlanta, who described family members pursuing care abroad due to U.S. costs. She said, “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,” describing how her family has historically used the approach to cover dental checkups and other care more cost-effectively.
Confidence in the government’s ability to make progress on key issues also appears to have declined. The survey found that about 7 in 10 AAPI adults said they are “not at all” or just “slightly confident” the government will make progress, up from 60% at the end of 2024.
The AP report said dissatisfaction with the Trump administration may be a factor. It also described worries among respondents from immigrant families. Ernie Roaza, a 66-year-old retired geologist in Tallahassee, said he worries 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 said, however, that he remains optimistic about the country, telling the AP: “This administration will make things worse,” and “But in every administration we’ve had, there are hills and valleys. We’re in the valleys right now.”
The poll surveyed 1,029 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders from Dec. 2-8, 2025, using a probability-based sample drawn from NORC’s Amplify AAPI Panel designed to be representative of the population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.