Poll: About half of AAPI adults name inflation top priority as government confidence drops

The findings underscore how tariff pressures, high rents in the gateway cities where AAPI populations are concentrated, and rising health care costs combine to squeeze a community that national surveys often miss — and that has grown markedly less confident in the government’s ability to respond than it was just after the 2024 election.

WASHINGTON — About half of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults said they want the government to prioritize the high cost of living and inflation — a rate substantially higher than for the U.S. public overall — according to a poll released Thursday by AAPI Data and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

By comparison, a separate 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 AAPI community’s elevated concern has also grown over the past year: about 4 in 10 AAPI adults held that view in the prior year’s survey.

The poll of 1,029 AAPI adults was conducted Dec. 2-8, 2025, using 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 is plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.

Cost anxiety runs across party lines

The gap between AAPI adults and the general public on inflation concern held regardless of partisan affiliation. AAPI Democrats, Independents and Republicans were each at least slightly more likely than those party groups nationally to name inflation and costs as a top priority, the survey found.

About 2 in 10 AAPI adults mentioned housing costs or jobs and unemployment as priorities for the government in the coming year — roughly in line with Americans overall. Black, Hispanic and AAPI adults were each more likely than white adults to name unemployment, jobs and housing costs as priorities, the surveys found.

Kevin Tu, 32, a Taiwanese American in Lynnwood, Washington, said he and his wife recently bought a home outside Seattle and are expecting their first child — but the convergence of obligations weighs on him even with two full-time incomes and a tutoring business on the side.

“I’m trying to figure out how to balance possible part-time day care with our mortgage, with cost of living,” Tu said.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, AAPI Data executive director and a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said tariffs add a pressure point specific to the AAPI community, which relies more heavily on imported goods and ethnic grocery markets than the general public.

“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.”

He recalled that last year, some AAPI shoppers were stockpiling at ethnic grocery stores ahead of tariffs taking effect.

Part of what may explain the AAPI community’s elevated concern about everyday costs, the AP report noted, is that the largest AAPI adult populations live in states and major metropolitan areas with higher costs of living and higher rents, such as California and New York.

Health care also a top concern

Some 44% of AAPI adults said they want the government to prioritize health care in the coming year. About 6 in 10 AAPI adults said they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about their health care costs rising in 2026 — roughly in line with U.S. adults overall, the survey found.

Srilasya Volam, 25, a business consultant in Atlanta, said high U.S. health care costs have pushed some of her family members toward medical tourism.

“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.”

Confidence in government falls sharply

The survey found growing skepticism about the government’s capacity to act on these concerns. About 7 in 10 AAPI adults said they are “not at all” or only “slightly” confident that the government will make progress on key issues — up from 60% who expressed that low level of confidence at the end of 2024.

Ernie Roaza, 66, a retired geologist in Tallahassee, Florida, who emigrated from South Korea, said he draws on firsthand experience with authoritarian governance to process the current political moment, while remaining cautiously optimistic about the country’s longer-term trajectory.

“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.”

About the survey

The AAPI Data/AP-NORC poll is part of an ongoing project examining the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, whose perspectives are frequently absent from larger national surveys because of small sample sizes and limited linguistic representation.