Recent U.S. Census data shows that Brooklyn’s Bangladeshi community is poorer than blacks, whites, or Latinos living in the county

The Asian American Federation found that 53.9 % of Bangladeshis living in Brooklyn are poor - the highest rate among the city’s eight largest Asian immigrant groups. The poverty rates for Bangladeshis was nearly double the numbers for blacks, whites, and Hispanics in the borough and citywide, according to stats from 2006 to 2010. The report also found high rates of poverty among Pakistanis and Vietnamese residents in the city. Asians are the fastest growing immigrant group in New York City, increasing by one-third in 2010 compared to a decade ago and adding 262,142 new residents. A large portion of the expansion came from the Bangladeshi community - centered in Kensington - which has doubled in size surging from 28,269 in 2000 to 61, 788 in 2010. A third of New York’s Bangladeshis suffer from diabetes which is three times the city’s average rate. Although many new Asian immigrants are poor, the hard numbers are much higher in the black and Latino communities. The Community Service Society of New York found that an estimated 315,000 blacks and Latinos live in poverty in Brooklyn.