Sociology Mind, 2022, 12, 108-119 https://www.scirp.org/journal/sm ISSN Online: 2160-0848 ISSN Print: 2160-083X DOI: 10.4236/sm.2022.123007 May 31, 2022 108 Sociology Mind The Growth and Spatial Assimilation of the Asian American Population, 1860-2018 Jingqiu Ren 1 , Arthur Sakamoto 1* , Ryan Earl 2 1 Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University, 4351 TAMU College Station, TX, USA 2 Freese and Nicholas, Inc., Austin, TX, USA Abstract The research objective of this study is to document the growth and spatial distribution of the Asian American population from its initial inception in 1860 through the contemporary period. Because prior research on the Asian American population has been rather limited, we assemble data and statistics from various U.S. Censuses to document the long-term growth of the Asian American population. We also use descriptive statistics to analyze the distri- bution of the Asian American population across the four major U.S. Census regions as well as across the 50 U.S. states. The results show that this racial category has increased substantially both in absolute number as well as a per- centage of the total American population. Most of this population growth occurred, however, after 1965. Accompanying this population growth is sub- stantial spatial assimilation. The regional index of dissimilarity declined from 0.98 in 1860 to 0.24 in 2018. No longer located primarily in particular locales in the Pacific, our analysis reveals that the Asian American population now has significant presence in all of the U.S. states. Asian Americans have changed from being an isolated and tiny portion of the American population to a highly visible and widely recognized minority group. Ignoring Asian Ameri- cans in contemporary discussions of “race in America” is a lingering but out- dated practice. Keywords Asian Americans, Population, Population Growth, Spatial Assimilation 1. Introduction We document the growth and spatial distribution of the Asian American popu- How to cite this paper: Ren, J. Q., Saka- moto, A., & Earl, R. (2022). The Growth and Spatial Assimilation of the Asian American Population, 1860-2018. Sociology Mind, 12, 108-119. https://doi.org/10.4236/sm.2022.123007 Received: April 5, 2022 Accepted: May 28, 2022 Published: May 31, 2022 Copyright © 2022 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access